


After the After

by Roselightfairy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Cliche, Codependency, F/M, High School, Nightmares, OCs are Normal People, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, not TOA compliant, written in 2015
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: As promised at the end of Blood of Olympus, Percy and Annabeth have decided to finish high school and pursue going to college together - and live a peaceful life. But that's easier said than done when Percy realizes he doesn't have enough credits left to graduate on time - and when both are reeling from devastating traumas piled on top of one another.(ABANDONED)
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Kudos: 23
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I started the Good Intentions WIP Fest, I knew this fic was one I'd have to post for it. It's kind of the epitome of begun-and-unfinished WIPs for me - something I started out of pure self-indulgent desire, had a vague plan for, but lacked the follow-through and abandoned . . . and which I'm pretty sure I'll never pick up again. When I wrote this fic, I was barely out of high school myself and it was still very familiar; I'm far enough removed now that I don't think I have the perspective to really pick it up again.
> 
> This fic was motivated by a couple of things: first, while not an official sequel, it follows my other fic _Aftermath_ , which is Percy and Annabeth's perspective on BoO (which disappointed me a lot when I read it). Second, it follows the proud tradition of early 20teens PJO fic of Annabeth going to Percy's high school - but I noticed that a lot of other fics within that cliché did not portray high school as familiar to me at all. There were a lot of stereotypes meant to juxtapose against our characters, but those stereotypes often did not ring true to my experience of, like...real people and real high school problems. So I decided to try a fic that depicted high school as more familiar to _me_ \- but with the added wrench of having an extremely traumatic mythological background that you're trying to hide from your classmates. This fic fizzled after awhile, but in rereading it to post I realized how much fun I had writing it, and I hope that if anyone takes a chance on it, they will enjoy reading it. It isn't like there's a solid plotline I really dropped; it's more - I was going to get them through the year of high school, and lost energy and fizzled. I hope that you'll still be able to enjoy what's here.
> 
> Also, this fic does its best to juggle RR's own inconsistent timelines and canon discrepancies.

When he hears the words, Percy can’t help but do a double take.

“I’m not what?” He stares at the guidance counselor’s too-sympathetic smile and suddenly feels as though his mouth is full of copper.

She seems to know that he doesn’t really need her to repeat it; she just nods, her face still kind. “I’m sorry, Percy. I know Mr. Blofis is your stepfather, and he’s advocated for you . . . but even with that, we can’t get around how few credits you have.”

“Right,” he says numbly, everything going a little tinny. Because of course it was inevitable that the demigod world was going to end up wrecking his mortal life even more than it already had, right?

Maybe he should have expected it – after all, getting kidnapped by a goddess for the last six months of your junior year on _top_ of a spotty history with education and a combination of dyslexia and ADHD doesn’t do much for your school record. But he’s always been so concerned about simply not getting thrown out of places that the idea of having to stay longer didn’t even occur to him.

So even though they maybe shouldn’t have surprised him, he still wasn’t expecting to be called in to meet with his counselor before the school year even started and be told that _You’re not on track to graduate._

Of course even after the _second_ Great Prophecy he’s completed and the s _econd_ evil force he’s defeated, the demigod world still finds a way to sneak in and mess everything up for him.

_Tartarus wasn’t enough, huh?_ he thinks bitterly.

“I’m sorry.” The counselor really does sound sorry. But it doesn’t change the fact that he suddenly wants to slam his fist into something – and even though she’s not the one he’s really mad at, her face is so annoyingly kind that he has to fight back the urge. His restlessness kicks in, along with his temper, aggravated by the bitterness –

He jerks his chair back, stands up. “Can I go?” he asks. Too abrupt, his voice too hard – but maybe she senses that he needs a moment, and she nods.

“If you want to come back, I’m free for the next half hour,” she calls after him, but he’s walking so fast that he barely hears her words.

Annabeth walked him here for the meeting, even though school hasn’t started; she could have stayed at his apartment, but they like to walk together, and neither of them feels quite right being outside alone. It’s too dangerous – too much chance that something will attack, and one of them will freeze up, and after everything they’ve been through together, there’s no way they’re letting something as stupid as a random monster attack bring that all to an end.

She’s sitting with her back against the wall outside the office, her sketchpad in her lap, working intently on something, but she looks up as soon as she hears the door open, with a guarded look on her face before she sees him.

Jumpiness – that’s one of those effects of Tartarus that hasn’t gone away. They both find it so hard to trust their surroundings.

At first she smiles, but that drops off of her face immediately at the sight of his. He doesn’t know what he looks like now, but he probably wouldn’t want to see it.

She doesn’t say much at first – probably she recognizes the hard anger on his face and knows that he needs to be somewhere, preferably _right away_ , where he can just hit something. So she grabs his hand and tugs him out of the building and they walk fast to a nearby park.

She glances around to make sure no mortals are around, and unsheathes her dagger. (She picked up a new one from the armory after the Giant War, saying she missed knife fighting – and anyway, her sword isn’t shrinkable like Percy’s.) Percy knows where she’s going, and with a sigh of relief uncaps Riptide so it expands into a sword.

After a few moments of slashing and hacking, neither of them has gained the upper hand and they’re both starting to sweat. But Percy’s lost enough breath that some of his aggression is gone, too, and he trusts himself to speak.

“So what’s wrong, Seaweed Brain?” asks Annabeth, darting in close and stabbing at his midsection. He parries away her knife and strikes at her, but she leaps nimbly out of the way and catches his blade on hers.

“The guidance counselor” – He falters; Annabeth gets in close enough that only a quick hop backward saves him from having his sword knocked out of his hand – “The guidance counselor told me I’m not on track to graduate.”

“Oh.” This time it’s Annabeth who drops her guard, just for a moment, but she too recovers quickly enough to jump out of the way of his sword. “Oh, Percy.”

“I mean,” he continues, feeling the anger surge back up in him, “not like it’s bad enough to get low grades anyway” – He jabs his sword under her guard; she catches his strike on her dagger hilt and pushes him away again – “but then I have to disappear for my whole second semester and” – He lets his voice trail off in a flurry of blows and slashes.

Annabeth doesn’t attack; just deflects each blow with her own blade, letting him vent his aggression on her knife. When he eventually tires out, she launches her own attack, grumbling, “I don’t care if she’s immortal; I’m going to _kill_ Hera.”

Thunder rumbles; both of them pause their sparring to glance up at the sky and say in unison, “Shut up.”

“Okay,” Annabeth resumes her attack, less intensely than before, “but are there any options? I mean, online classes, tutoring sessions, or something? A way to make up credits?”

“I – I don’t know,” admits Percy. “I just – she said it, and I got so angry I was going to punch something, so I had to go before I did something that got me expelled again.”

“Probably a good call.” She feints at his collarbone and ducks down to strike at his middle; only instinct saves him and he blocks her blow. “But I’m sure there’s something we can do. And if not . . .” She hesitates; he uses her distraction to thrust his sword at her, but she parries it with her knife again. “If not, I can always do a year at a community college here next year, or take a year off to start work on Olympus again. See if the gods want me to finish.”

Her face twists as she says it, and he would call attention to it, except he knows what she’s thinking and there’s no point. “I’m sure they do,” is all he says. They’re both panting now; soaked in sweat, they turn it down a notch. Now the fighting is mindless; its only purpose is giving their hands something to do. “And I guess you could do that, but . . . I don’t know; I just – I don’t want to let them win, you know? I just want to live a normal life, and I don’t want to have to do another year in high school. I want to graduate, and go to college, and just _be_ with you without – without” – Embarrassingly, his voice cracks. “Without anything getting in the way.”

She catches his last strike again and holds it. “Percy, no matter what happens, we’ll get through this, okay?” She pulls away from the fight, and sheathes her knife; he caps Riptide, feeling slightly better. “If you want to graduate this year, I’ll do everything I can to help you do that. And if you can’t, I’ll wait for you, okay? I wouldn’t leave for New Rome without you. Not after” – This time, it’s her voice that breaks. “Not after everything.”

Silence expands; in that moment, Tartarus is there with them, its presence huge and as real as the swords they were just holding. Percy can see it in the scars on Annabeth’s arms, in the tense line of her jaw, in the dark circles indicating she hasn’t slept well in weeks, in the hollow look in her usually-vivid eyes.

He’s sure she can see it in him as well; he tries not to let the memories crush him.

“Okay,” he says to her, trying not to remember the sight of her in Tartarus, with her eyes sunken in her face and her skin frosted over with death. He leans forward and encloses her in his arms, focuses on the feeling of her heartbeat against his and the warmth of her skin. “Okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

The next day they are all there in the guidance counselor’s office after school; Percy and Annabeth, his mother and Paul, all seated around the table with the counselor at the head. Paul had to be here anyway – school starts next week, and he’s getting his classroom prepared and lesson plans finalized. And all of them want to see if there’s any way they can get Percy to graduate this year.

When the counselor first saw Annabeth she raised her eyebrows, but let her in anyway. So she sits beside Percy and they hold hands under the table. Every time Percy stiffens with frustration he squeezes her hand, venting his anger on her fingers. Sometimes he worries that he’s squishing the life out of them, but her hands are strong and warm in his, and he feels a little better knowing that she’s there.

“You get one credit for every year of one class that you successfully complete,” explains the counselor. “Six classes a day should come out to twenty-four by the end of high school. We let our students graduate with twenty-two credits.”

She lays Percy’s transcript out on the table; Sally and Paul lean over it. Percy stays back. He doesn’t want to see his failures out there in black and white – he’s already seen too many of them as it is.

“You’ve completed two full years here, and failed only one class – your first semester of sophomore English,” she continues. “So there’s 11.5 credits that you have. And with this year you can complete six more – so, 17.5. But this whole business with your sudden disappearance last year” –

“We explained,” interrupts Percy, his voice tight. “It was a family emergency.”

She smiles sympathetically again. “I know,” she says. “And I’m sure it was perfectly legitimate. But it doesn’t change the fact that it led you to fail many of your first semester classes and have nothing for second semester. The only ones that you passed were your history and chemistry classes, because you had taken the finals before winter break. So that’s one more credit added, which brings you up to 18.5. Assuming you pass all your classes this year, you still need 3.5 credits to graduate. That’s more than a full semester of work.”

“Which kinds of credits does Percy still need?” interrupts Paul. He knows this school system better than the rest of them – this whole business with credits doesn’t make much sense to Percy; all the numbers make his ADHD act up. All he knows is that things don’t look good for him.

The counselor scans the transcript again. “If he takes all the regular senior classes this year, then on top of those he needs . . . 1.5 English credits, one math credit, half a history credit, and half a science credit.” She writes the words down, but they all immediately slide into a blur before Percy’s eyes. He feels dread rise up in him and squeezes Annabeth’s hand to keep from punching a wall.

“Is there any way we can get those done this year?” asks Percy’s mom, leaning forward. “Morning class, or online classes, or tutoring” –

Something in Percy’s gut twitches at the mention of online classes. He knows it’s a horrible idea – knows that demigods and technology don’t mix. But at the same time, he wants to graduate this year. He wants to graduate with Annabeth and then go off to college with her. He wants to wear that cap and gown, see the pride in his mother’s face that he’s pulled off what seemed to them to be impossible years ago. He wants to show them all – gods and monsters alike – that they can’t keep him down for the rest of his life. He wants this more than he’s ever realized.

“Online classes are a possibility,” admits the counselor. She turns to her computer and clicks on a few links, pulling something up. “They’re expensive – about $50 a class, but if you’re willing and able, we can get it to work. The nice thing about these classes is that you’re not on anyone’s schedule but your own. You can take as much or as little time as you need.”

Percy sees his mother and Paul exchange a taut glance. They really don’t have the money to pay that much for him to finish high school this year. They could, maybe, but he doesn’t want to be more of a burden on his mom than he has been all these years already.

Annabeth speaks up, seeming to sense his agitation. “What if we worked out some kind of system?” she suggests. “If we could get a syllabus from the classes that Percy needs to take – some basic guidelines – and a final, I could tutor him in the subjects he needs. If he passes the final, he gets the credit?”

The counselor purses her lips, looking a little reluctant. “That might work . . . if we had any way of proving that you weren’t cheating on the final.”

“Have him take it here,” Paul proposes. “Give Percy and Annabeth as much time as they need to teach him the subjects that he has to learn, and when he’s ready for the final have him take it under teacher supervision.”

Percy feels hope rise up in him at the suggestion. Could this work?

The counselor nods slowly. “As long as none of you are opposed to the idea . . . I don’t see anything wrong with it. I’ll have to talk to the principal and make sure he agrees with it . . . but as long as Percy is willing to work hard and Annabeth is willing to give up her time to help him” – She switches her focus to Percy – “and as long as you are able to pass the teacher-approved final, I don’t see why we can’t do that.”

“Really?” Percy feels as though there’s a weight on his chest, pushing the breath out of him in one massive huff. “Is it really . . . a possibility?”

She speaks slowly, as though she realizes the impact her words will have. “I think it is,” she says. “I don’t know for sure . . . I’ll have to check with the administration” – And then her gaze is firm on Percy – “and you’ll have to be ready to work harder than ever this year. But if you really want to do this, if you’re really committed, then I think it is possible.”

Percy feels the weight suddenly disappear from his chest. Now the pressure of Annabeth’s hand is less encouragement and more restraint: keeping him from springing out of his chair and whooping so loudly they can hear him all the way back at Camp Half-Blood.

His mom seems to sense that he’s ready to explode. “Thank you _so much_ ,” she says, and Percy realizes she’s probably as relieved as he is. “Will you call us back in when you get official permission and the syllabi that we need?”

“Yes, I can do that,” responds the counselor. “And if I don’t before, I can at least get them to Percy on the first day of school next week.” Her gaze is warning now. “You’ll need to check in regularly with me, let me know how things are going. But I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”

They all shake hands, exit her office – and as soon as they get outside, Percy lets out the yell that’s been building up inside him for the last few minutes. He jumps into the air; Annabeth hugs him hard. He looks over to see that his mother is beaming, tears edging at the corners of her eyes. As soon as Annabeth lets go, she comes over and squeezes him, too. Paul comes up to the side and claps him on the shoulder.

“I’m going to graduate,” Percy says wonderingly. “Mom . . . Paul . . . Annabeth . . . I can graduate!”

Annabeth smiles at him; for a moment, her eyes are filled with nothing but happiness. “You can, Seaweed Brain.” She hugs him again. “But you better be ready to work hard!” She mimes cracking a whip, and he laughs.

He knows it’s going to be hard. But right now, he doesn’t care one bit.


	3. Chapter 3

The first day of school is all kinds of weird.

Percy enters Goode surrounded by all these people that he only vaguely remembers are his classmates – yeah, he got his memory back, but these people never took up all that much of it in the first place – and feeling completely out of his depth.

He and Annabeth walk in the front doors together, schedules in hands. Paul was able to get them theirs early so they don’t have to wait in a line with all the others to pick them up at the doors. They have a grand total of one class together, because Annabeth is in all AP classes and Percy’s in as low levels as possible. But at least they have the same fourth period class, and the same lunchtime. And their last classes are in the same wing, so they can meet up easily to walk home together.

Annabeth squeezes his hand as they reach her classroom. “See you in a few hours,” she says, and he tries to ignore the pang he feels as she walks into the classroom without him. They went through _Tartarus_ together, and it’s hard to believe that something as silly as a mortal school is keeping them apart.

Percy wonders if it’s thoughts like that that will keep him from ever having a normal life.

As he turns to his first class – English – he reaches into his pocket to play with Riptide. The lump of the pen against his leg is comforting.

“Hey – Percy, right?”

Percy jumps, yanking his pen out of his pocket as he whirls to face the source of the voice. Luckily, though, he calms down before he can uncap it, realizing that it’s just another kid.

“Um . . .” His tongue goes numb for a moment, before realizing that the kid is talking to him. “Yeah. Hi.” His mind scrambles for the guy’s name.

“Good to see you again! It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” The guy’s face is open and friendly; he holds out his hand for a fist bump. “Didn’t you disappear for a lot of last year?”

“Uh . . . yeah.” Percy’s pretty sure the guy’s name is James . . . didn’t they have chemistry together last year? He reaches out to return the fist bump. “It was this random family emergency thing. Kind of . . . personal.”

“Oh.” Maybe-James nods. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to be nosy.”

“No, you’re . . . you’re good.” Percy smiles hesitantly. “Not to be awkward or anything, but I kind of forgot your name – sorry. Is it James?”

“Jason.” The guy smiles again. “Easy mistake to make.”

“Oh.” Percy realizes that this is going to be either really easy, or really complicated. “I – nice to see you again.”

“Same.” Jason nods. “Well, I’m gonna go sit down. Glad you’re back, though.”

“Same.”

Jason walks away, finding a desk in the back of the room with some other guys. Percy scans the room, looking for some other vaguely familiar face. Once the initial shock wears off, he realizes that he recognizes a lot of them, even if he can’t remember many names. He’s always been something of a wallflower – he had Rachel for a while, and then he only had a couple of months on his own before he was snatched away by Hera and thrown into another stupid quest, another stupid prophecy.

He closes his eyes for a moment, fighting the memories.

Eventually, he chooses a seat in the back corner of the classroom, farthest away from the door, so he has a good view of the whole room. He doesn’t want any random surprises – he wants to be able to see if someone comes in. He’s also close to the window, so that if there’s trouble outside he can see that, too.

About a minute before the bell rings, a couple of girls walk in in cheerleader uniforms, whispering and giggling. The only two seats in the classroom are right in front of Percy, and they head in his direction.

When they turn toward him, for a second his mind glitches out. He forgets that he’s in this classroom; he’s back in Tartarus and there are demon cheerleaders coming towards them and Annabeth is completely weaponless and Kelli is saying, “ _How awesome_ ” –

“Um, hello?”

Percy snaps out of it. He realizes that he’s half out of his seat and one of his hands is clenched around Riptide, but he’s made no attempt to uncap it. He must look pretty strange. One of the girls is waving her hand in front of his face.

“Um” – He swallows, sinks back into his chair. “Um, sorry. Hi. What?”

“We were just wondering if you mind if we sit here?” One of them giggles; Percy forces his heart to start again. She’s probably not a monster.

Probably.

He shakes his head a little bit, clearing his mind. “Sorry. Um, yeah, no problem. Go ahead.”

“Thanks.” The other girl laughs and sits in the seat in front of him. He concentrates on the back of her neck. It’s silly, he knows, but all of his senses are on high alert. He’s had _far_ too many bad experiences to trust any cheerleader.

“Oh.” She turns back toward him. “Are you new? I don’t remember you.”

“Um . . .” Again, he’s stuck. “I was here for part of last year. I’m Percy.”

“Oh, _right_.” The other girl nudges her friend. “I remember him. You’re the one who disappeared, right?”

“Right.” Percy’s starting to wonder how many times he’ll be asked this. “I – it was a family emergency.”

“What happened?” The girl’s eyes widen in curiosity.

“It’s . . .” He fumbles. “It’s personal.”

“Yeah.” The other cheerleader elbows her friend. “God, Em, don’t be so nosy.” She turns to Percy. “I’m Hayley, by the way, and this is Emma.”

“Hi,” he says, still a little shell-shocked, and then the bell rings and everyone turns to face the front.

It’s an easy day today – it’s the first day of class, after all. For the most part, in all of his classes they get to pick their seats, and Percy makes sure to get there early enough to claim the back-corner seat. The teachers just go over expectations for the classes, and there’s a little homework but not much.

The whole day is weird – full of people who kind of know him and whom he kind of remembers, but not _really_. He’s in English first period, followed by algebra second and biology third. Fourth period is government, and the only class he has with Annabeth, followed by lunch, P.E., and art.

He originally protested against taking a period of art and then going home to be tutored in math and all the hard subjects, but the school requires an art credit and they won’t accept an art “final exam” solution like he’s doing with the rest of the classes.

Even though it’s an easy day, it’s still harder to get back into the swing of regular school than Percy imagined. There’s just so much _stimulation_ – even though he’s not on the battlefield his instincts remain on high alert, making it hard to pay attention in class because he’s so busy making sure everyone else is acting normal, busy scanning the room to make sure there are no threats – and the hallways, with their crush of people, are torture.

When he walks into government class and sees Annabeth, he’s pretty sure he breathes out for the first time all day. She spots him immediately, makes a beeline for him and slips her hand into his, and he can tell right away that she’s had a hard day, too.

“How are you doing?” he asks anyway.

She shrugs – a quick jerk of the shoulders. “Fine,” she says simply. “A little jumpy, but that’s normal.”

“Same. Also I don’t trust cheerleaders.”

“I never did.”

He laughs and skims his eyes over the room. The seats in the corner are free – Annabeth moves toward them with him, so easily that he knows she’s been doing the same thing he has all day. They claim the seats.

It’s funny, because usually Annabeth is a distraction to him – he’s so busy looking at her and thinking about her that he can’t concentrate on anything else – but he finds it easier to pay attention to the teacher in this class than he has in the last three. Maybe it’s just because he trusts her to watch his back, and being with her means he doesn’t have to worry about how she’s doing. It gives him less to worry about, and makes it easier to focus.

At lunch, they eat sandwiches they packed and sit in the corner of the lunchroom. They talk about their classes and their teachers – light stuff, not the things that are still lingering in the back of both of their minds.

“How do we want to do the tutoring thing?” asks Annabeth eventually, finishing up her sandwich and crushing the plastic wrap into a ball in her hand. “Just work through the textbooks together? Do an hour of math, an hour of English, and so forth?”

“Oh gods.” Until now, Percy hasn’t really thought about it – now, it starts to sink in on him how much work he has to do. Anger wells up inside him again; he bites it back. “Um, I have no idea. Oh gods, Annabeth, this is going to be so much work” –

She squeezes his hand. “You can do it, Seaweed Brain. You beat Ares in a fight at twelve years old – you can survive a year of high school.”

“Yeah, but” – Beating Ares isn’t the same as this. Yeah, Percy is used to doing the impossible, and he has a problem with being told he can’t do things. But schoolwork is _so_ not his forte. All he can do right now is repeat, “Oh gods.”

“It’s fine,” she promises. “I’ll be right there to help you, you know. You don’t have to fight on your own – not even high school.”

“Y-yeah, yeah, I know, but” – His voice breaks off again. “I guess – okay. Okay, I’m going to do it.”

“Of course you are.” She squeezes his hand again. “We’ll – oh.” The last word is practically drowned out by the ringing of the warning bell. “We’ll meet after school to walk home, okay? I’ll see you then.”

With a fleeting glance around to make sure there’s no one watching to snag them for PDA, she kisses him quickly and darts off, tossing her ball of plastic wrap in the garbage on her way down the hall. And Percy heads off to P.E.

P.E. and art are easy for the first day, and will remain easy. Percy’s glad he’s ending his day with them – it’ll be a nice break in between hard classes and tutoring after school. He’s only just starting to realize what he’s gotten himself into.

Still, he can’t bring himself to regret it – especially when the counselor (Ms. Byrnes; he learned her name) ducks into the art room right after the bell to hand Percy a stack of papers and textbooks. She sets them on the table in front of them, and before leaving, she pats his shoulder. “Percy,” she says, “I want you to know that I’m really proud of you. There aren’t many people who would put in the effort you’re about to put in to graduate, and I think it’s admirable.”

He’s speechless for a moment, and she smiles at him and departs.


	4. Chapter 4

He and Annabeth divide the textbooks between their two backpacks and haul them home, taking a break from the walk in the same park they went to a few days ago to spar. Percy can already tell that this is going to become a regular thing for them.

He’s okay with that.

It makes him start wondering if he’ll ever really have a normal life with Annabeth, though. Because this – going to school together, sparring with no imminent threat of death over their heads – reminds him of this time last year. When they’d just started dating, and Kronos had just been defeated, and they were both ready for a low-key year of minor battles and maybe occasional problems, but no prophecy hanging over them, no war to worry about.

Shows how much they knew.

It’s only been a year since then, but Percy feels about a decade older. Maybe that’s the reason things are so different now – because now there’s no way to believe that life will be easy. Maybe they both just trust a little less now, especially after everything that happened to them. Maybe they just have kind of stopped believing that life can be normal for them.

Annabeth is staying with Percy for the year – it’s just the easiest solution. Camp Half-Blood is too far from Goode for Annabeth to be able to get there every day, and after everything that’s happened, they both just feel safer knowing the other is near. It’s hard to admit to others, and it’s not like they want it known around camp, but the only way to stave off the nightmares is to sleep in the same room, holding one another the way they did in Damasen’s hut. It doesn’t always make the insomnia go away, and often they both lie awake, talking or simply breathing each other in, all night. But even if they’re awake the whole time, at least they’re together.

They’ve learned that, if nothing else, at least they deserve that.

Surprising her, and himself, Percy catches Annabeth’s next dagger strike on his sword hilt and locks their wrists together. Then he pulls her in with his free hand and kisses her, long and deep.

When they break apart, they’re both panting.

“I love you,” he says, capping Riptide and putting it away. “Just so you know.”

“Love you, too.” She sheathes her dagger. “What made you decide to say that at this particular moment?”

He shrugs. “I was just thinking about you. And us. And being together.”

She kisses him this time, even more intensely. This time he feels like he might have to scrape his brain off the ground. “Well,” she says, “those are always good thoughts to have.”

“Uh . . .” He pulls himself together. “Yeah. Yeah, they are.” He picks up his backpack from the ground, and they keep walking.

When they reach home, they sling their backpacks on the floor beside Percy’s bed, and Annabeth starts pulling out textbooks. “We should put these in order,” she says briskly, “and figure out a schedule.”

Percy’s already tired, and he’s barely done anything in school. “Oh, gods,” he moans. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Yes you do,” Annabeth reminds him, and he sticks out his tongue at her. She ignores it, of course, stacking books and papers into piles. “So here’s English – ooh, one of your classes is mythology, that’ll be easy, and Paul can help with” –

“Annabeth?” A voice that is decidedly not Percy’s, and not one of his parents’, either, breaks in.

They both jump about three feet in the air and whirl around, weapons out, almost slashing through the Iris-message that has appeared in the middle of the room. Frank darts backwards, holding up his hands to avoid a weapon that can’t touch him anyway, and stumbles over the hem of his purple toga. Reyna just stands there, unshaken but muffling a laugh with her hand.

“ _Styx_ ,” Annabeth curses. “Percy, I completely forgot we were supposed to confer today. Can you . . .” She looks around helplessly. “Can we push off our session for just half an hour?”

“I have no problem with that,” says Percy, waving at the Iris-message. He keeps forgetting that Annabeth is now an official advisor to New Rome. She IM’s with Frank and Reyna every week or so – for the most part it’s not even to deal with actual problems; the three of them just geek out over battle strategy and things only children of war gods find interesting. Percy’s fine to leave them to it. “Hey, Frank. Hey, Reyna.”

Frank grins at him. “Hey, Percy. How are things on your end?”

“The usual.” Percy gestures to the mounds of textbooks on the floor. “Getting crushed with homework. Being told I’m not going to graduate unless I make up half a year’s worth of classes. Hey, Reyna, does the college in New Rome look at our grades?”

“No,” she promises. “All demigods are welcome. You do have to complete some form of secondary education, though. In your case, high school.”

“Awesome.” Percy surveys his piles of books glumly. “Well, at least I’ll be getting a lot of practice on college work.”

Annabeth shoves him gently. “Don’t complain, Seaweed Brain. I have to do it, too, you know. To teach you.”

“Yeah,” he protests, “but that’s different. You’re a daughter of Athena – it’s not a problem for you. You’re, like, scary smart.”

Annabeth smiles, nudging him with her shoulder. He nudges back.

“Speaking of scary smart,” interrupts Frank, “can we get back on topic?”

“Yes,” agrees Reyna. “Quit flirting with our advisor, Jackson. Go make yourself useful and do your homework.”

Percy pouts at them, but grabs his English textbook – the only class he has homework for today – and goes into the living room to start trying to puzzle out the words on the pages.

Every now and then, he hears a loud remark or an, “Oh my gods that’s brilliant!” from the bedroom, where the others are Iris-messaging, and he looks at the door. He can’t decide if he’d rather be listening to them with his brain melting out his ears from boredom, or sitting here fighting the frustration that reading always is.

He’s almost done with his assignment when he hears, “Percy! Get in here!”

He obliges gladly, setting the book aside and bounding across the room to enter the bedroom, flopping down on his bed.

“Percy!” Hazel has joined them. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good.” He grins at her. “Good to see you, Hazel.”

“Okay, you guys,” interrupts Annabeth, “I’ve got tutoring to do. We’ll talk to you next week at the latest, okay? It’s time for Percy and me to get to work.”

Percy sighs, but doesn’t complain. He waves at the others. “Talk to you later. Hope everything goes well in New Rome.”

“Bye,” they chorus, waving back at him. Hazel blows them a kiss, and then Annabeth waves her hand through the screen, cutting the connection.

“Are you done with your English yet?” she asks.

“Almost.” He sighs.

“Okay.” She starts flipping through one of the stacks of paper. “Go finish that, and then we can get started with your tutoring.”

“Oh, gods,” he moans for what must be the tenth time today, but he gets up from his bed and obeys.


	5. Chapter 5

A few days into the school year, and Annabeth can’t tell if things are getting better or worse.

School is easy, of course – that’s hardly the problem. It’s always been easy for her, and even if reading her assignments for English takes longer than for any other class, she’s gotten better at reading between the lines and finding symbols where once it used to frustrate her because there was no clear answer.

Now, Annabeth has started seeing things less in black and white, more shades of gray, and while it may make her better at English it causes pangs in her that she’s never felt before.

Even a year ago, it was easy. The gods did some bad things, but on the whole they were good. The Luke who had turned on them wasn’t _her_ Luke; evil had corrupted him and if she could just find a way to save him then things could be okay again. Kronos was bad and the gods were good, and Annabeth was never going to let herself be on the side of evil.

But now it’s harder. Because the gods may be the _best_ option – but Annabeth is starting to think less and less that they’re really _good_. The gods closed Olympus to demigods, refused to help their children when they needed it. The gods held off on claiming Piper and Leo – and maybe if they’d just been a little more helpful, none of this would have happened. It was Hera who kidnapped Percy and Jason and started the whole chain of events that led to the fulfillment of the prophecy – and maybe (Annabeth will deny that she ever thought this) it was for the best, after all.

But _best_ , she’s learning, despite its being the superlative form of the word, is not really turning out to be better than _good_.

The fact is, if the gods hadn’t done these things, she and Percy would never have ended up in Tartarus. And maybe it is all for the good of the world, and she and Percy were just collateral damage – but it doesn’t change that fact that they deserve better than this, and it’s the gods’ fault that they haven’t gotten it.

They’re reading _The Metamorphosis_ in her English class, and Annabeth wonders if she and Percy have undergone a metamorphosis of their own. Perhaps nothing as drastic as turning into giant beetles – but drastic enough to change their lives, suck out a lot of the joy and hope they used to have, and eventually drain them dry enough to be empty shells, just like Gregor Samsa.

They’re not there just yet – at least, Annabeth doesn’t think they are. But as the days go by and things seem to get harder rather than easier, she wonders if that’s the path they’re on.

And if it is, it’s the fault of the gods.

They discuss that, too, in English – the idea of some supernatural force acting to make Gregor Samsa realize things that he would otherwise not know. This deity, though unnamed, is assumed powerful enough to transform the man into a beetle – and wise enough to be able to do what is right for him and his family, even if it seems to be so wrong.

When they discuss this “god” as wise and all-knowing, Annabeth has to fight down the urge to snort derisively.

She decided to take AP English this year, though it’s never been her favorite subject, because she needed a distraction. If she’s constantly pushing her brain to do things – achieve excellence in school, keep her reflexes sharp in sparring, discuss strategy with Reyna and Frank, and tutor Percy on the side – she doesn’t have time for the memories to catch up.

Except for the fact that they do it when she lies in bed awake anyway; instead of thinking out plans like she always used to or dreaming up structures or pondering philosophy, her pre-sleep brain is awash in memories of fire rivers and bloodred skies and choking, crippling despair. And when she finally does fall asleep – if she does at all; there have been more than a few sleepless nights – her dreams are filled with the never-ending dark of blindness.

She realizes that Kronos didn’t corrupt Luke, after all. Yes, he did the wrong things. He let his anger overtake him. Poisoning Thalia’s tree, trying to kill Percy and bring down Olympus – those were evil deeds. But Kronos didn’t corrupt Luke in order to make him do them. Luke didn’t turn evil – he just found places to vent the anger building up inside him. He made himself a vessel already filled with enough bitterness that it was easy enough for Kronos to slip in as well.

And who can blame him for being bitter? Annabeth feels that anger, too, and so does Percy. She sees Luke sometimes in Percy’s eyes, and it scares her because although she’s loved them both and still does, she’s never ever wanted them to be the same person.

The attack brings this all to the forefront of Annabeth’s mind; that first Friday of the school week they’re walking home, breathless from sparring, starting to find some measure of peace in this daily routine that they’re slowly building – and they’re both so jumpy and twitchy from Tartarus that she doesn’t know _how_ they don’t notice it, maybe just wishful thinking; but either way, neither of them notices the Laistrygonian until it’s upon them.

There’s a faint rustle of bush – they both tense and turn, but there’s no time to even draw their weapons before the giant has launched itself at them.

It chooses Annabeth as its target – possibly arbitrarily, as she finds it hard to imagine she’s angered more monsters than Percy has – but it doesn’t really matter _why_ at this point; what matters is that despite years of fighting and the nerves from Tartarus, Annabeth’s reflexes are suddenly as sluggish as they were when Arachne attacked her, and before she can even remember that she’s not weaponless this time the Laistrygonian has tackled her to the ground, raising a giant sword, and she can feel the impact as her head hits the pavement with a _thud_ and the pain as its blade sinks into her shoulder. Unlike many monsters, this one’s not wasting time with words.

She’s not sure, but she thinks she might have blacked out for a few seconds, because when she opens her eyes the giant’s not on top of her anymore – it’s standing now, and Percy has Riptide out and is dueling it _ferociously_. His eyes are wild, and he’s clearly gained the upper hand easily, but the giant’s not dying because Percy hasn’t struck it the killing blow yet, although she can see that he could easily do it. Instead, he’s muttering – awful things, terrifying things – and stabbing and slashing and hacking with such _malice_ that the monster even looks afraid.

“Don’t – you – dare – touch – her,” he grunts. “No one _ever_ ” – But he seems to run out of words, because with one last thrust, the monster dissolves into dust.

Then he’s on her, and she can’t seem to lift her head from the sidewalk – she’s not sure if it’s out of fear or sadness or the pain that’s beginning to throb through her head and her whole body. Her vision’s a little blurry – and that terrifies her, because no, no, she’s not blind, she’s not in Tartarus anymore, _is she?_ – and she’s not sure who she’s seeing; his face is switching between several different ones and she can’t keep them straight in her head; he’s Percy, then he’s Bob – _gods, Bob_ – and then he’s Percy again, and then _Luke_ –

“Percy?” she croaks, trying to lift her head but realizing immediately that that’s not going to work. There’s pain radiating through her shoulder now, too, sharper than the dull ache in the back of her head.

“Annabeth” – he chokes out, “Oh, gods, _Annabeth_ ” – and then his lips are hard on hers in a desperate kiss. He pulls back once, his eyes still wild, but then he attacks her lips with his again, and she can’t draw breath –

“Percy, it’s okay,” she gasps, “I’m okay, but can you – let me breathe?”

“Sorry,” he whispers, pulling away, but he keeps his hands on the sides of her face, “sorry, I just thought – I thought” –

“I know,” she says. “I know. But Percy – we’re still in an alley.”

It’s almost a relief to get back to practical concerns. With a jolt, as though he’s actually physically snapping out of something, Percy nods. “Right,” he says. “Right. Can you – can you stand?”

“If you help me,” she says, although she thinks even that’s a little ambitious to attempt right now. “Get your arm – yes, like that.”

Percy eases his arm under her back and hoists her up easily. Her head goes so light and woozy on the way up that she almost just crumples to the ground again, but Percy’s there, supporting her. She leans against him gratefully.

“Nectar,” he says, eyes still frantic with worry. With the hand that’s not supporting her, he digs into his backpack and comes up with a plastic bag. “Or ambrosia. That works, too.”

Part of Annabeth dreads eating ambrosia now, because its taste has changed. Though the food itself wasn’t _that_ good, the proportional feeling of comfort and safety in Damasen’s hut was enough that for her, ambrosia and nectar always taste like drakon meat stew – and that comes with a backlash of bitter guilt that almost overwhelms the taste of the ambrosia. But she knows she needs it, so she chokes it down, and feels her shoulder start to heal. Her head doesn’t completely stop spinning, but she has a better handle on things now.

Note to self: try to avoid getting tackled by giants.

“Ow,” she murmurs, lifting a hand to touch the back of her head. It _hurts_. “That must have been . . .” She tries to calculate the force that the giant must have been using – it was at least twice her mass, times the additional velocity –

She can’t do the math; her head hurts too much. That’s a problem.

“Annabeth?” asks Percy, concerned.

“Do you know how to check for a concussion?” she responds.

Percy’s eyes go wide, and then harden. She sees that anger spark to life again, but then it dies down in the face of her immediate problem. “No. Did it – do you think – ?”

“Iris-message,” she suggests. “Will might know.”

“Right.” Percy looks around, hands fluttering aimlessly. There’s not much chance of a rainbow here. “I think there was a fountain in that park . . .”

“Works for me.”

With his arm supporting her, Annabeth is able to walk, and it’s not too far. They make it to the fountain, and Percy tosses a drachma into the rainbow of spray. “O Fleecy, do me a solid. Show me Will Solace at Camp Half-Blood.”

Annabeth knows he got that cloud nymph’s “direct number” for Iris-messaging, but it’s still weird to hear him say it. But the drachma disappears into the rainbow, and soon enough a picture starts to take shape.

“Will!” Percy says, as soon as the blonde hair comes into view. “And . . . Nico.”

There’s a scuffle; Annabeth can’t totally see what’s going on, but the infirmary slowly comes into focus. Will’s at a sink, scrubbing his hands, and Nico is standing right next to him leaning against the counter.

When they hear Percy’s voice, though, they both jump. Will turns and smiles, but Nico’s face goes bright red and he hops back a few steps. “Hey, Percy,” he manages. “And . . . Annabeth?”

Everything is kind of fuzzy, but Annabeth manages a wave. “Hi, Nico; Will.” This is something she’ll have to investigate later, but considering she can’t really see straight right now and has much more pressing concerns to worry about, it’s all she can do to ask, “Will, do you know what the signs of a concussion are?”

He snaps to alertness. “Whoa, Annabeth, what happened?”

“Monster attack,” she explains. That’s really probably all she needs to say, but she finds herself going on. “I hit my head, pretty hard. I’m not sure how much force it used; I can’t calculate it for some reason.”

“A child of Athena can’t calculate?” Will looks worried and teasing at the same time, which Annabeth didn’t even know was possible. “That’s pretty serious.”

“Shut up.” She feels like she’s regaining her balance; she’s standing upright. But everything’s still a little fuzzy around the edges. She can’t think straight – and she feels that fear creeping in, that fear that emerged in the Spartan temple. Not being able to think has become her worst fear – worse even than spiders. And not being able to see comes a close second.

She holds onto Percy’s hand, to remind herself that if nothing else at least _he’s_ still here, and tries not to lose herself in the awful memories.

Will, meanwhile, leans close to the Iris-message, and then curses. “It’s too hard to see from here; it’d be best if you could get here somehow . . .”

Percy’s forehead scrunches up, the way it always does when he’s worried. “Paul has the car,” he murmurs. “I’m not sure . . .”

“Gray Sisters?” suggests Annabeth.

Percy shudders. “Please, no.”

Nico speaks up. “I could . . .”

“Absolutely not.” Will puts a hand on his arm. Even through the fuzziness, Annabeth can see Nico’s cheeks flare up. “I told you, no.”

Nico pouts. “I was just going to say, I could get Jules-Albert to help.”

“Who’s Jules-Albert?” cuts in Percy before Will can say anything.

“He’s my driver,” says Nico nonchalantly. “He’s French.”

“How in Hades do you have a French driver?”

“ _Hades_ is right,” answers Nico. “He’s a zombie.”

Percy splutters something incoherent; Will is laughing in the background of the Iris-message. It’s Annabeth who finally takes charge, as usual. “Nico, if you actually have a French zombie chauffeur and you’d be willing to let him come get us and bring us to camp so that Will can check and see if I’m actually concussed, then by all means send him over here.”

Nico leans down to put his hand on the ground, but Will grabs at it before he can. “I said no more underworld-y stuff!”

“Come _on_ , Solace,” groans Nico, but Annabeth notices that he’s not yanking his hand away. “It’s been over a month. And summoning doesn’t take that much energy.”

“Nope.” Will still hasn’t let go of Nico’s hand. It’s kind of cute, actually. “I care about the health of _all_ of my patients, Death Boy. Including you.”

“Don’t call me” –

“Nico?” Percy interrupts. “You’re one of his patients?”

Nico seems to realize that there are others watching; he blushes again and pulls his hand free. Annabeth’s never seen him so flustered, and her filter doesn’t seem to be working as well as usual, because she finds herself blurting out, “You guys are cute.”

Nico jumps back another couple of feet. “Don’t – no – I’m – yeah, I’m one of his patients.” His cheeks go even deeper red.

“Wow, Annabeth,” notes Percy. “I think you _are_ concussed.”

“Shut up.” Yeah, her filter is _definitely_ not working – her mouth feels disconnected from her brain. “Just because I’m not a daughter of Aphrodite” –

“Nico!” Another voice breaks in; Jason comes running into the infirmary. “And Will. And” – He starts. “Percy and Annabeth?”

“Hey, man,” says Percy. “How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain.” Jason nods, peering through the Iris-message. “How about y – holy Hephaestus, Annabeth, your eyes are dilated like _whoa._ ”

Annabeth groans.

“How can you see that?” Will leans in closer. “Are those glasses magical or something?”

“I want magical glasses from a god,” remarks Annabeth. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to worry about blindness ever again – and to her horror her traitorous mouth has opened and those words are spilling out. Percy squeezes her hand tighter; she knows that memory pains him almost as much as it does her.

Will and Nico look curious, as though they’re about to ask questions, and Percy hurriedly diverts them. “Hey, Annabeth, maybe Jason can help. He is our resident expert on head injuries.”

Jason scowls. “Are we still going on about that?”

Percy grins. “You’ve had a fair few concussions, right?”

Jason just glares.

Annabeth groans again, and smacks her forehead with her hand – immediately regretting it when her vision blacks out for a second. That all-consuming panic descends on her – but then the scene resolves itself again, still pixelated but at least _visible_ , and she reminds herself not to hit herself in the head. “Whoa, that was a mistake. Will, if my eyes are dilated and everything’s blurry, what does that mean?”

“Probably a concussion.” He nods, snapping into medic-mode. “Did you have some ambrosia or nectar?”

“A little ambrosia, earlier. Should that help?”

“Yeah. Demigods – especially children of Athena – don’t get brain damage too easily, so it’s probably mild. Ambrosia’ll make it go away in a day or two. Until then, probably just get home and rest for the rest of the day. No homework and no school tomorrow.”

“It’s Friday,” Percy reminds him.

“So much the better. Just rest and recover. You’re fine to sleep – that whole you’ll-never-wake-up thing is a myth – but make sure someone wakes you up every hour or so. You shouldn’t have any lasting symptoms – that’s one way being a demigod is nice. We tend to heal faster than mortals. Take more ambrosia as soon as you feel it’s safe and you’re not going to burn up, and check in with me again tomorrow. You should be able to get back to school on Monday – though why you’d want to is a mystery to me.”

After Will finishes his litany, they all stare at him for a bit, in awe.

“ _Dang_.” Percy is the first to break the silence. “Where’d you go to medical school? That was impressive.”

“Son of Apollo, here?” Will gestures to himself.

“Thanks,” Annabeth interrupts the admiration-fest. “Percy, can we head home now? It’s – we’ve got a walk ahead of us.”

“How long a walk?” Will looks concerned now. “Like, long enough to violate the rest-and-recover rule?”

“Probably,” sighs Percy. “I could carry her.”

“No way, Seaweed Brain,” says Annabeth before he can get macho. Two-times savior of Olympus he may be, but there’s no way he can carry her and both of their backpacks all the way back to his apartment while at the same time watching their backs to make sure nothing else attacks. “We’re going to need to find another way.”

“I don’t have money for a cab – but oh!” Percy’s face suddenly brightens. “I know how!”

He does his famous taxicab whistle, and Annabeth smiles. On the other side of the Iris-message, Jason peeks out the window of the infirmary. “He just left the stable.”

“Awesome.” Percy sits on the ground; Annabeth goes down with him, her vision going dark again and then stabilizing once she’s still. She’s feeling kind of nauseous, so it’s a good thing Blackjack is on his way and she won’t have to walk home.

“Okay,” says Will. “If you two are fine for now, I have other patients to get back to. Check in with me tomorrow, okay?”

They all chorus their goodbyes, and then Will swipes his hand through the mist and cuts off the connection.

With the distractions gone, Annabeth is free to think – because really, she’s a child of Athena. A concussion couldn’t stop her from doing that. Her mind drifts back through the day, and it stops on the memory of Percy’s face as he fought the Laistrygonian after it downed her. His face, screwed up into a hard grimace, and his eyes wild with anger and hatred.

It was the look he’d had with Arachne – with the _empousai_ –

It was terrifying.

And she knows that this won’t be the last time she sees it.


	6. Chapter 6

When they arrive back at his place, Percy hops off of Blackjack’s back and slings a backpack over each shoulder. Annabeth glares at him, though, and holds out her hand for hers. He can see what Jason was talking about – her pupils are _huge_ ; the gray just edges around the outside.

“Annabeth, you literally just got slammed to the ground by a giant and now have a concussion,” he informs her. “I think I can carry your backpack.”

“But if you do, then I’ll feel even more useless than I already did.” She makes a face at him. “I can walk fine, and we just need to get into the apartment. I can take it.”

He realizes that this isn’t a fight he’s going to win, so with a sigh he hands over her backpack and she swings it over her shoulder and leads the way into the building.

When they get up to his room, she sets the backpack on the floor and starts to pull books out of it. “Where should we start?” she asks.

“You aren’t seriously planning on tutoring me right now, are you?” Percy shakes his head. Typical Annabeth.

“I hate to break this to you, Seaweed Brain,” she shoots back, “but you have a semester’s worth of work to catch up on and there’s no way I’m going to be caught slacking as your tutor.”

“And I hate to break this to _you_ , Annabeth,” he retorts, “but you’re concussed and I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be using your brain right now. Tutoring does not fall under the category of _resting_.”

“But – Percy – I don’t want to” –

“Annabeth, just rest, okay? Gods know you need it.”

“So do you,” she responds.

He bites back his own reply, because she’s right. They both need sleep, really – they don’t get enough of it. But he sleeps more than she does as is – one of the benefits of having a Seaweed Brain, maybe, is that it doesn’t keep him awake for as long as hers does, nor does it distract him with dreams quite as often. Not to say that they aren’t still there . . . but he’s not lost on the fact that she’s always awake when he falls asleep, and awake before him in the mornings, too. If having a brain injury is the only way to get her to sleep, then maybe it’s a blessing in disguise after all.

“I do,” he admits finally. “And I swear, if it’s so important, I’ll have Paul do some English with me when he gets home. But for now, let’s just try to rest, okay?”

She doesn’t seem to really need much convincing; instead, when he puts a hand on her shoulder, she slumps into him. With the crazy eyes she has going on, the dark circles beneath them are even more prominent. She looks more tired than ever.

“Okay,” she whispers. “But . . .”

“What?”

“I kind of need to change shirts.”

He looks down at where his hand is on her shoulder and realizes that blood from her wound has crusted onto a tear in her shirt. He moves his hand, blushing furiously.

“Right,” he says dumbly. “I’ll just . . . right.”

He heads for the door, but she stops him. “It’s fine, Seaweed Brain. Just don’t turn around.”

He can feel his face heating up so much he might actually spontaneously combust, but he hears shuffling behind him, the swoosh of fabric and the jerk of a dresser drawer. Her stuff is in the bottom half of his dresser now; they take turns in the bathroom in the morning and evening so they haven’t quite run into this situation before.

Maybe it’s silly; maybe most seventeen-year-old boys would jump at the chance to share a room with their girlfriends for these purposes. But the relationship dynamics between him and Annabeth are so strange – what with the godly kidnapping and the fall into Tartarus – that they both know that to throw anything else into the mix would only complicate things even further. They need each other emotionally more than ever before, and on top of all the trauma they’re still working through the last thing they need is complications.

The brush of a shirt, and the dresser drawer shuts. “You can turn around now.”

She’s wearing a shirt she stole from him over a year ago, right after they started dating. And even after everything he’s said about the emotional being much more important, he does still really like the way she looks in his clothes.

She climbs into bed and holds the covers up so he can crawl in with her. It’s still a warm September day, but somehow it still feels good to be under the bedcovers, and wrapped up tightly with Annabeth. Well, to be fair, that last part always feels good.

“Set an alarm,” she murmurs. “For an hour – so I wake up.”

“Right.” Percy fumbles with the clock on his nightstand and sets the alarm. “You’re covered. Now rest.”

Her arms snake around his waist and tug him in close, and this is something he’ll never complain about. Her head nestles into the hollow between his neck and shoulder; he rests hers against her hair. It’s soft; a cushion of tangled curls, and it feels nice against his head.

“Sleep, Annabeth,” he says – and for what seems like the first time in weeks, she _does_. She falls asleep almost instantaneously – he can tell by the way her body relaxes, goes slack. Usually when they lie in bed at night she’s tense in his arms, body stiff and muscles taut. As though she can’t let herself take a break even then. He doesn’t know what’s going through her mind and for the most part he doesn’t ask – just holds her, because he knows that’s what she needs. But it’s times like these that are the best, when her body actually softens and her breath is deeper and she lets her guard down, even for a little while.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even last long enough for him to fall asleep. Maybe fifteen minutes later, when he hasn’t even finished marveling at the feel of her sleeping against him, her body becomes rigid in his arms. Hers, wrapped around his waist, are suddenly tight. But she doesn’t seem to be awake yet – she’s tensed up even in her sleep, and he knows a dream is plaguing her.

He’s not sure whether he should wake her up or let her sleep, because even if it’s torturous he knows her body needs it. But when her hands release him – one of them clawing at her face, the other groping in midair – he knows there’s not really an option.

“Annabeth!” he says, shaking her. “Annabeth, wake up!”

“Ah!” Her cry is sudden and sharp. “Eyes – I – ah – Percy?”

His name is said in a desperate, breaking voice – and then she wakes up, her eyes flying open and her head snapping up off of his shoulder. She looks at him – meeting his eyes once – and then suddenly her whole body goes limp and she collapses into him, wrapping her arms around him again, even tighter than before. She doesn’t make any noise, but she’s shaking hard, and holding him harder.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he just stays there and holds her, leaning his cheek against her head, wishing his life were more than a constant story of helplessness. “I’m here,” he says, because that’s all he can do. “I’m here, we’re alive, and it’s going to be okay.”

“I know,” she whispers into his shirt. “I know, theoretically. And that should be enough for me, right? Logically, we’re both here, we’re both alive – shouldn’t that mean we’re both okay?”

“You’re too logical, Annabeth.”

“But isn’t this a case where logic should be enough?”

He can’t reply to that, because he doesn’t have an answer.

* * *

She doesn’t sleep after that, but she does _rest_ ; the comfort of Percy’s warm body wrapped around hers and the quiet noises he makes in his sleep lull her into an easy rhythm of almost-asleep. In a way, being awake is better than sleeping anyway, because this way she has more control over her thoughts and they can’t slip into places she doesn’t want to visit. Well, sometimes they still do – but less often.

Reyna let slip once that she knows how to control her dreams, and Annabeth makes a mental note to learn how from her.

And right now, she doesn’t have much control over her thoughts at all. Everything’s a little weird and off-kilter, probably as a result of the concussion, so she can’t turn her mind away from the thoughts of Tartarus – but those thoughts are also softer, more blurry around the edges. Less sharp and terrifying.

So Percy’s sleeping – fairly peacefully, too, it seems – and Annabeth is lying cozily with him, tucked so deeply into him that she’s not actually sure where the one leaves off and the other begins, when there’s a knock on the door.

It’s not a loud knock, just a regular one – but even in their most relaxed state they’re both still so jittery and nervous that it might as well have been a monster kicking down the door. Percy snaps violently out of his slumber and they both flinch so hard that Percy’s nose slams into the top of Annabeth’s head.

“Ow!” he exclaims, and she lets out a cry of surprise and they’re both tangled and flailing in the covers when the door opens and Paul sticks his head in.

“Percy – oh.” His face immediately goes red, and he starts to back out of the room. “Just . . . let me know when you’re decent.”

“Paul!” yells Percy as the door eases shut. “Paul, it’s not what it” – The door closes, and he slumps back into the pillows. “Oops.”

“You know they know we sleep in here,” Annabeth reminds him. The jolt awake did not do much for her mental state, but logic is second nature. “He probably was just surprised. It is the middle of the day.” She untwists her legs from the sheets. “We should probably explain to them what happened. But first – you’re okay, right? Not going to start the apocalypse again?”

“Seriously?” Percy complains. “One little nosebleed, and _everyone_ needs to tease me” – He touches his nose cautiously. “No, I think I’m good. Are you?”

“I’m fine.” She’s not sure if he’s asking about her head or about something else, so she goes with the easy answer. “Let’s go talk to your parents.”

Paul and Sally are sitting in the living room, holding hands on the couch. Something in Percy relaxes when he sees them; Annabeth can feel the muscles in his arm loosening. She knows – even after all this time – how much he loves seeing his mother with Paul; with someone who is kind and hardworking and honest and loving. She looks at Paul and finds herself agreeing with all those adjectives.

“Hi,” she says. “We were . . . resting. It’s been a long week.”

Percy snorts. “Yeah, and we got attacked on the way home. Always great when those happen.”

His tone is twisted with sourness; she wants to remind him that she has more right than he does to be acting like this. But she knows he knows that anyway; remembers his anger with Arachne on her behalf, and she wonders if her penchant for logic means he thinks he needs to feel irrationally angry for the both of them.

“Attacked?” Sally jerks in her seat; attention completely focused on both of them. “Are you all right?”

“I am.” Percy scowls. “Annabeth . . .”

“Just a mild concussion,” she interjects, before he can say something and worry his mother even more. “We talked to Will Solace, and it’s going to be fine. We were just resting.”

“Resting.” Paul’s eyes rest on them a little longer. “I see.”

“Look,” Percy starts, “Mom – Paul – you know we” –

“We know.” Sally’s face is filled with that ridiculous understanding that still throws Annabeth off guard. “We know, Percy. Paul’s just teasing.”

“Mostly,” says Paul, his face turning serious. Percy’s hand tenses in Annabeth’s, but Paul continues. “Look, we trust both of you – and you’ve both saved the world so many times that it’s ridiculous to do this” – He’s blushing furiously. “Just – I wanted to make sure you know – everything you need to know.”

Sally smiles. “Percy and I had the Talk a few years ago. It was very . . . edifying.”

Percy groans loud and long. When Annabeth turns to look at him, his face is glowing red. Evidently this was not an experience he’d like to repeat.

“And, uh,” Annabeth can feel her own face heating up. “The Athena cabin has books on everything.” She looks down. “ _Everything_.”

“Annabeth, honey,” Sally’s voice is gentle. “Books aren’t always the best way” –

“Older siblings?” Annabeth manages to squeak. “I – have those, too. I think I know all I need to know.”

“All right.” Sally lays off. “I believe you. I just want to make sure you’re both . . . okay.”

“We’re okay, Mom,” Percy promises. _As okay as we can be._ He doesn’t say those words out loud, but Annabeth knows that that’s because they don’t need to be said – everyone’s thinking them anyway.

“Yeah, really,” Annabeth adds, “we’re – we’re not even _thinking_ about” –

She stops. It’s weird to say the word – of course she’s _thought_ about it, but not as much as one might expect. Not as much as a normal seventeen-year-old might, anyway, and she and Percy are far from being normal seventeen-year-olds. What with having him plucked out of her life by a sadistic goddess and then falling into the depths of Tartarus, they’ve been much more concerned with . . . well, other matters. Besides, she’s read a lot, and known a lot of people, and she knows how seriously intimacy can mess up relationships. After everything they’ve been through, and with the way they keep each other grounded, they don’t need to throw anything potentially destructive into their relationship. They need to rebuild their lives first.

Percy wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. He’s warm and solid, and she leans into him, feeling him doing the same. They’re in a balancing act, holding one another up with their own weight.

“Mom, Paul,” says Percy, “we know that right now is . . . the absolute _worst_ time to be thinking about anything that might . . .” His voice trails off.

“Complicate things,” finishes Annabeth, and Sally and Paul nod in understanding.

“We understand,” says Sally. “You know we have a lot of respect for both of you. And just so you know – we’re here if you need anything. Both of you.”

Little warm tingles start up in Annabeth’s stomach. She doesn’t know if she’s ever met anyone as wonderful as Sally Jackson.

“Help with English?” Percy suggests, and some kind of tension releases inside of Annabeth. She finds herself laughing, although it wasn’t all that funny, and Percy joins her.

Paul smiles slowly. “I think that could be arranged.”

* * *

Annabeth goes off to rest again as Percy sets up his things with Paul. They spread out his work over the dining room table, and Paul heads into the kitchen to get a snack before they start.

While he’s gone, Percy finds himself thinking. He’s been hit on the head many times before, and so has Annabeth. Neither of them has ever had a concussion. Demigods’ brains should be more resistant to damage – particularly those of Athena’s children. But his and Annabeth’s thoughts have been anything but stable lately – and he starts wondering, yet again, if Tartarus has had a permanent effect on them.

He hopes not. He knows that Annabeth will be fine – for now, anyway. The way she describes it, the concussion is probably mild anyway, and he trusts Will’s advice. But – it’s just –

The two of them are so weak. Their reflexes are as good as ever; their reactions just as sharp – but it’s in a different way. As though the tough skin that once protected them has been worn through, and the angles are all they have left.

For skill and ability in battle, Annabeth is the most formidable fighter Percy has ever seen. In a fight between any other demigod he knows, he’d put money on her in a heartbeat – and win it, too. And once upon a time, the same could be said about him. But something has changed. Their ability in battle is the same – even better, maybe. But their ability to hold their own thoughts together is not.

Annabeth is still the smartest person he’s ever met. But something is changing – her confidence in herself is eroding away. He remembers years ago, when she cried in his arms in a bubble under the sea, and afterward told him that her fatal flaw was hubris. He wonders if that has changed at all now. He wonders if the fall to Tartarus and the losses they suffered there, as well as the humiliation on the last leg of their quest, have drained the pride out of her.

What would Annabeth be without her pride? Percy wonders, and shudders to think of the answer.

“That saying’s a lie,” he says abruptly as Paul comes out of the kitchen holding a sandwich.

“Huh?” Paul cocks his head to one side.

“That ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ saying?” Percy kicks a foot against the floor. “It’s a lie.”

Paul sighs, but it’s not an annoyed sigh. It’s a sad one, instead – Percy looks over at him, and suddenly his stepfather looks much older than he’s ever seemed.

“You know,” he says, propping his elbows on the table and tapping his fingers on the edge of his plate, “when you and your mom first told me about the whole mythology thing, I had my doubts. But after a while I thought – well, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard of.”

Percy smiles, remembering Paul’s delight upon seeing the giant wall of fur that was Mrs. O’Leary in the living room. “I remember.”

“But now,” Paul continues, “I – I don’t know. I still think it’s pretty cool. But I hate that it seems that the fate of the world always rests in the hands of teenagers.”

Percy feels a little swell of irritation rise in him at those words. After everything he’s done, is Paul seriously going to question him? He starts to speak up, but Paul holds up a hand and stops him.

“Not because I don’t think teenagers can handle it,” he says gently, “but because they shouldn’t have to. Percy – you and your friends are seasoned veterans. You’ve seen and done things that no one should have to experience, let alone people as young as you are. And I agree with you, it’s completely unfair that this is messing up your senior year for you. But I don’t agree with what you’ve said – that what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger.”

Percy wants to protest – because what does Paul know about it, after all – but Paul continues before he can.

“I’m so, so sorry for everything that you and Annabeth have been through, Percy. And your other friends, to some extent. But I don’t agree that it’s made you weaker. It’s hurt you. It’s made you older and more worn than anyone should have to be – especially at seventeen. It’s beaten away a part of you, and there are parts that you won’t get back. But I would never call you weak.”

Percy feels his face starting to warm up, and he finds himself thanking any gods that were responsible for his mom and Paul getting together. But Paul’s not done yet.

“You and Annabeth are the strongest people I know. And I know that you’ll find a way to get through this – to grow beyond the hardship you’ve had to go through. You’ll be able to rebuild yourselves, and that will make you stronger than before.”

After he finishes his speech, Paul looks down as though embarrassed, reaching for his sandwich and taking a huge bite. He seems to be trying to lessen the effect of what he just said – but Percy just sits there, feeling a smile slowly tug at the corners of his mouth. He had no idea that Paul holds him in such high esteem.

Paul swallows and clears his throat. “Anyway.” He shifts in his seat. “I just – yeah. Just thought” –

But what he just thought Percy doesn’t know because he’s gotten up and crossed the table to hug his stepfather tightly. Paul seems startled at first, but he turns to hug Percy back, and Percy feels _safe_ for the first time in a long time.

“Paul,” he mumbles, “I’m so glad you and Mom met.”

He pulls back and returns to his seat, and he can see Paul wiping his eyes behind his sandwich. A moment passes, and then Paul clears his throat again.

“All right,” he says. “Now, you’re making up a semester of sophomore English, right?”

“Right,” says Percy without enthusiasm. “Among other things.”

Paul looks down at the paper in front of him. “That’s mythology,” he says. “Do you want to start with that – kind of ease into English?”

Percy pauses. He’s not sure how to answer this. Because, yes, mythology will be easier for him – school-wise – than any other subject he might study. But . . . as far as his mental state is concerned . . .

There are too many things he’d rather not relive. At least, not just yet.

“Um, Paul?” he ventures. “Could we actually . . . start on something else? Just at first?”

Paul seems to understand. He shuffles some papers around in front of him and nods. “Sure, Percy,” he says. “No problem.”


	7. Chapter 7

Over the next week, Percy starts noticing that Jason – the kid in his English class – says hi to him every day before class. The first few times it happens, it’s a little unnerving. As a general rule, in public establishments, Percy is not comfortable with people paying attention to him unless that person is someone he already knows and trusts. And the only ones here who fit that description are Annabeth and Paul.

So he’s not sure what to make of this. Unless the school blew up or something, he’s always flown under the radar pretty well. For the most part, the only good friends he’s ever made at school were somehow related to the mythological part of his life – Grover, Tyson, and then Rachel. When he was in elementary school, he was always getting the report, “Does not play well with others” – and he was too busy getting thrown out of schools to make any lasting friendships. And after he found out about his connections to the mythological world – well, he had a different group of friends that he trusted more than he could any mortal. People who knew the truth about his life, and who he knew would always have his back.

And in high school, it’s easy to blend into the background. Aside from being Paul’s stepson, there’s no reason for anyone to take any special interest in him.

Which is why it’s weird that this kid he _swears_ he had no real relationship with before this year has suddenly started to be so friendly to him.

It’s more than just a passing, “Hi,” too. Jason always asks him how he’s doing and then looks at him as though he expects an actual answer. Percy usually just deflects with a, “Good, you?” and lets it pass, but Jason tries to actually make conversation. And ordinarily in the past, Percy would go with it – but he’s finding that his most recent quest (probably as a result of losing his memories, getting them back, and then falling into Tartarus) has left him with some real trust issues.

Also, it doesn’t help that the kid’s named Jason. One Jason is _quite_ enough to deal with, thanks very much.

So he sticks with deflecting Jason’s friendly advances. He has nothing against the guy personally, but finding new mortal friends would just be far too complicated at this point. He’d rather stick with Annabeth, and just wait this year out until they can go to California in a monster-free city with other demigods and legacies, where they know they can live their lives in peace with the friends they already have, and the new ones they’ll be free to make.

But that week, things change. Because Percy’s English teacher assigns them a group project.

“All right, everyone,” Ms. Herman says, “I know we started off last week with short stories, but we’re going to move into our first Shakespeare play.”

Percy groans inwardly. The word _s Shakespeare play_ do not bring up happy thoughts in his mind. Books are bad enough for someone with dyslexia – but Shakespeare, with his confusing words and archaic puns that are hard for any normal person to understand, is even worse.

“But to hopefully give you all a better understanding of it, we’re going to do the reading in groups. You are expected to meet with your groups every two days that we’re reading – this meeting can be as long as you want, as much time as you need to talk through what you need to – and discuss what we’ve read so far. And, to prove that you’ve done it, I want you each to write me a 100-word summary of your meeting.”

At the groans that follow this statement, she frowns at them. “100 words is not much,” she says. “It’s about a paragraph. I’m not asking you to write a whole essay.”

“Can we at least pick our groups?” calls someone from the other side of the room. Percy turns his head to look – it’s one of the cheerleaders he met on his first day.

Ms. Herman seems to deliberate. “Sure,” she says finally. “Go ahead and pick your own groups. Three people to a group, how about.”

Percy hates choose-your-own-group activities. He’s not very social, and – at least at this point – he doesn’t have any desire to be. He’d rather not work in groups at all, but if he must, the stress of picking his own is only an additional problem.

“Percy?”

He looks up, surprised; Jason is looking at him expectantly from a couple desks down. He and a kid named Henry are together already; he waves Percy over. “Want to be in our group?”

“Sure.” It’s not like Percy can turn him down – he needs a group, and Jason is nice enough. Hesitantly he gets up and moves over to where the other two are sitting.

The play they’re reading, as it turns out, is King Lear. Not that this rings any bells to Percy, but he’s sure Annabeth or Paul will go off on some kind of rant about what a great work of literature it is. Annabeth has trouble with English, too, but she reads enough to know pretty much every great work of literature that exists.

Jason and Henry start chatting animatedly about meeting times as soon as Ms. Herman begins passing out the books. They’re skinny, making them look deceptively simple. But Percy’s struggled through Shakespeare in English before, and he knows that that appearance is a lie.

“Percy?” Yet again, Jason’s voice startles Percy out of a reverie. The other two guys are looking at him oddly.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “Just . . . blanked out there. What were you saying?”

“How does tomorrow after school work for you?” repeats Henry. “For our first meeting?”

“Sure, I think.” Percy scans his nonexistent schedule in his mind. “I’ll just have to – never mind.”

“What?” Suddenly, the two others are abundantly curious.

“Oh, just” – He shuffles uncomfortable. “I was just going to say I’d have to talk to my girlfriend about it.”

“You have a girlfriend?” Both of them try unsuccessfully to mask the surprise that flashes across their faces.

“Yeah. Annabeth Chase. You know her?”

“Annabeth?” The surprise comes full-force back onto Henry’s face. “I have calc with her. She’s your girlfriend?”

Percy gets how it might surprise some people. If not for their other world, he and Annabeth might never have met and realized how well they work together. But for all the complaints he has about that other world, for all it’s done to him, he’d never trade for a normal life. Because if he had a normal life, Annabeth would not be a part of it – and he doesn’t even want to imagine his life without her in it.

“Yeah. She’s great, isn’t she?” He finds he can’t stop the tiny smile from forcing itself onto his face.

“Uh, yeah.” Henry shifts uncomfortably.

Percy’s hackles automatically go up. “What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing,” says Henry. “She just – nothing.”

Before Percy can react to that, Jason intercedes. “Why do you have to ask her?”

“Huh?” This time he heard the question fine; he just doesn’t get its gist until Jason explains himself.

“Your girlfriend. Do you need her permission to meet your group? I mean” –

“No!” Percy doesn’t like what Jason seems to be implying. “I just – we just usually walk home together, and she’s” – He stops, deciding that he’s just digging himself deeper into the hole of questions he really doesn’t want to answer. “Just . . . she might want to stay with us and do her homework while we discuss.”

“Okay.” Jason shrugs and drops it. Percy lets out a quiet sigh of relief. He doesn’t want to explain that Annabeth’s staying with him and why, or why they don’t like to walk alone. Firstly, it’s none of Jason’s business. Secondly, it brings up memories Percy doesn’t like to relive.

Class ends soon after, with their teacher assigning them to read Act I by the next afternoon (“I don’t care if you read the whole thing tonight or tomorrow during lunch, just so long as you’re ready to discuss it with your group when you meet tomorrow. I’m expecting those summaries in two days!”), and Percy leaves for math, slipping the little book into his backpack.

Algebra is torture as usual, and he can barely understand why people (namely Annabeth) would take calculus if they didn’t have to. She has enough credits because her time at Camp Half-Blood counted as homeschool credits, and she managed to get that time while Percy was missing counted, too, even if all she did was work on the Argo II and occasionally try to contact gods and nature spirits for information on Percy. But since that ship work involved so much algebra, geometry, physics, architecture, and all those other things that Annabeth can go on and on about, she was able to fill out the paperwork for those classes.

Percy’s not jealous. Well, he is, a little, but he also expects it of her. If anyone can succeed in school, it’s Annabeth – and besides, her not doing extra work means she has time to tutor him. It’s not exactly win-win, but it’s about as close as Percy can expect to get.

Biology is less awful than English and algebra, but it’s also not his favorite subject. He tries to pay attention, though, because if he wants to study marine biology like Annabeth suggested, he’ll need to know this stuff.

Of course, when he sees her in fourth period, his whole body relaxes. They sit in their regular seats in the corner, holding hands under the table so the teacher doesn’t nail them for PDA. And when they go out to lunch, he brings up his group work in English.

“So, I have to stay after tomorrow,” he says.

“Did you get in trouble or something?” She squeezes his hand, and he loves that unspoken reminder that she knows and understands that if he got in trouble, it most likely wasn’t his fault.

“No, nothing like that. But I have English group work to do, and we’re going to meet after school. Do you want to stay, or . . .” He trails off.

She purses her lips. “I . . . do,” she says slowly, “but I wonder . . .”

“Wonder what?”

“Well, I mean – we’re going to have to get used to being separated. We went on missions separately this summer. How much more dangerous can walking the streets of New York be?”

“Plenty more dangerous,” he objects. They find their usual secluded lunch table and sit down without breaking stride in their conversation. “We were with other people when we went on those missions. We always had others to watch our backs or cover for us in case we” –

He doesn’t want to say it – doesn’t want to remember those times of freezing up on the battlefield, forgetting where he was and what he was doing, fighting off awful flashbacks from times he’d rather forget – but he doesn’t need to, because he knows she remembers it just as well.

“I know,” she says quietly. “But this whole year – I mean – we can’t be together all the time. We can’t _need_ to be together all the time.”

He wants to protest, but she has a point. At this point, Annabeth is so integrated in his life that he doesn’t know what it would be without her. He’s not sure if it’s actual _need_ or just a combination of want, love, and shared trauma – but he does see her point. At the same time, though, there’s a difference between _needing_ to be together and feeling better with the other person.

“I don’t think” – Percy looks around. Maybe the cafeteria isn’t the best place to have this discussion. “I just wondered if you wanted to wait.”

She seems to deliberate – probably weighing the logic of her previous argument with how much she actually _does_ want to wait and walk home with him – and then nods slowly. “Yeah, I will.”

He sighs, more relieved than he’d really like to admit. “Good. We can . . . we can talk about the other stuff more later, okay? I know what you mean, but I don’t think it’s – well, we’ll just talk about it later.”

“That’s fine,” she agrees, easily enough that he knows she’s also relieved to push it off. But before she can say anything else, the bell rings and they separate for their fifth-period class.


	8. Chapter 8

Annabeth is also having trouble with the social scene.

For all Percy has had difficulties with friendships in the past, he’s much better at interpersonal relationships than she is. She may be good at reading people, but she definitely doesn’t know how to react when presented with an emotional problem she needs to solve. She can calculate; she can design; she’s smart, and she knows it, but – as Piper sometimes teases her – she is not a “people person.”

Especially considering that only in very recent years has she begun to start trusting people with her heart again. It’s just hard for her to believe, when she really gives a part of herself to someone else, that that person will actually hold on to it. She’s lost too many people to be so willing to open up to even more.

And quite frankly, after everything she’s gone through, seeming “normal” to the mortals is so far at the bottom of her list of concerns, it’s not even on the paper.

So she’s been going about her business pretty much the same way as Percy – keeping her head down, staying out of the way. She has to fight the urge to speak up in class, but she doesn’t want to stand out in any way. So she participates enough so that her grade will be safe, and settles for shocking the teachers with her perfect scores on tests (okay, so she’s only had two quizzes so far, but she knows that when the tests come around, she’ll do well on them. It’s not even in question).

Maybe once upon a time she wanted to be special, to be noticed – but Annabeth has had enough of being recognized.

If she had to name the specific moment when she became disenchanted with admiration, it’d probably be, oh, when _Tartarus himself decided to show his regard for her and Percy by killing them personally._

After that experience, she’s had no more desire to be special. She just wants to be alive, and keep Percy alive. And if keeping her head down in school is the only way to do that, then it’s what she’ll do.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t notice the other students, though. She’s been hyperaware of her surroundings ever since school started, and she knows every one of her classmates’ names and makes sure to remember all her encounters with them. It’s better to be safe than sorry, after all, and Annabeth is very done with taking risks.

So she recognizes both Henry and Jason when she goes with Percy to meet them in the commons. Jason she doesn’t know by name, but she sees him in the halls often enough to recognize his face. Henry she knows because he’s in calculus with her. He’s pretty quick, but also has an edge to him that she doesn’t like. He made an awkward pass at her at the end of last week, but she managed to shut him down easily enough that it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Ever since then, he’s avoided her gaze in class, and she’s more than happy to follow suit.

That particular sentiment isn’t specific to Henry, but it certainly applies to him.

“Hi, Henry,” she greets him anyway, when they see one another. No point bringing up awkwardness to anyone else. “And you must be Jason?”

She’s not going to tell anyone else how hard she laughed at Percy when she found out he’d had another run-in with a Jason who wanted to be his friend. She abstained from asking if the two of them had jousted in a Kansas wheat field yet, but only barely. Honestly, Percy should be relieved by her restraint.

“Yeah.” He squints at her, and for a second there’s something there that puts her on edge – a flash of something. But then she thinks she must be reading too much into things, because in milliseconds his face is open and friendly again. “Nice to officially meet you.” He grins.

He’s probably just figuring her out, the same way she is them. But she knows that there’s a lot less need for him to have to read her than there is for her. She’s had far too many experiences with monsters – and people – to let her guard down for a second.

“Likewise,” she responds politely, and sit down in the fourth chair at their table, pulling out her calculus book and hooking her ankle around Percy’s. It’s nice to touch him, to know that he’s there, even in a simple environment like this. She’s not sure if that’s a paranoia she’s ever really going to lose.

She swore to herself she was just going to sit and not interrupt, and she actually does surprisingly well at keeping that promise. There are a few times that she’s just dying to jump into their discussion, but then, it wouldn’t be authentic if it weren’t actually their work, so she manages to restrain herself, trying to focus on her homework instead. She’s actually light-years ahead of the rest of the class, having learned most of this stuff in the Athena cabin before she was twelve, so she finishes her homework quickly and starts sketching on the back of her worksheet, as she’s wont to do when she’s bored.

Most of her work on Olympus is done; at least, when Olympus closed last winter the gods made it pretty clear that they were done with demigod involvement in their affairs. Of course, that lasted about as long as it took Miss Stick-Your-Nose-into-Everything to ruin everything – and at this point, Annabeth’s not too keen to ask them if they want her back. She’s not too keen to talk to them ever again, in fact. The only thing that would make her ask them would be if Percy didn’t manage to graduate, and that –

She doesn’t even notice that she’s scowling at her worksheet until she realizes that the conversation beside her has stopped; when she looks up, Henry and Jason are staring at her.

Percy puts his hand on hers and squeezes it; the hardness inside her melts a little, softens. She flips her hand over to lace her fingers into his. For a second she wonders what the other two boys think of this interchange; then she remembers that she doesn’t care.

“Uh, Annabeth?” ventures Henry. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” It’s a little more brusque than she would have liked, but she’s also very uninterested in continuing this line of conversation. She squeezes Percy’s hand, asking him silently to deflect the conversation, and to her relief he understands.

“Let’s just go on,” he says, and this might be the first time he’s ever purposefully drawn attention back to schoolwork. The thought almost makes her smile, if not for the tenseness still locking her jaw together, only slightly relieved by the pressure of Percy’s hand against hers.

They start the conversation again, and Annabeth tries to finish the half-drawn sketch, but she didn’t even realize until now that she was definitely drawing a temple to her mother, and somehow her hand took over on its own and started sketching the owl that led her through dark caverns underneath Rome, and the whole thought just makes her so angry at her mother, who removed her blessing and sent her off on a dangerous quest with the ravings of a lunatic and led to the most traumatic event in her life and who _didn’t even apologize_ –

And somehow she still fought alongside her mother and is now sketching temples for her and it all builds up inside her until she’s pressing the pencil so hard into her paper that the lead breaks off with a snap loud enough to arouse the others’ attention again.

And suddenly she has to leave; she understands how Percy felt in that meeting with his guidance counselor at the beginning of the year, because she needs to get away from people and pull herself together.

She has slightly more restraint than Percy does, though, so she stands up and says, “Excuse me,” as politely as she can, and stalks off to the nearest girls’ bathroom, ignoring the half-questions coming from the boys behind her.

She stands in front of the sink, taking deep breaths and fighting down the ugly anger rising up in her chest. She can direct it at the gods, but there’s no way that breaking a bathroom mirror will do anything for her at this point. So she stands there and breathes, hissing air between clenched teeth and fisting her hands in her hair until she feels like a person again.

* * *

Percy knows as soon as Annabeth’s pencil breaks what’s going on, and it’s only reinforced by the fact that she immediately disentangles her fingers from his and storms away from the table. He glances over at her paper and sees a sketch of an owl, and it all comes clear to him.

“That . . . was unexpected,” says Jason, looking sideways at Percy, as if wary as to how he’ll take it.

Percy tries to shrug it off, but his eyes are glued to the owl on Annabeth’s page, and anger starts to melt his chest into a seething pool. Of course she was thinking about her mother. Of course she got up and left so quickly.

Percy’s maybe not the best person to say this, considering he’s always had trouble with Athena, ever since she told him those famous words _I do not approve of your friendship with my daughter_. That was the beginning of their . . . relationship, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

But this is something completely different.

_Well, as far as I know, I’ve been a lot better for your daughter than you have._

Can Athena hear thoughts? Maybe she can’t, or maybe she just realizes that everything he’s thinking, she deserves, because no thunder rumbles.

“Percy? Hey, Percy?”

“Sorry.” Percy shakes himself out of his thoughts, realizing that his fingers have tightened around his own pencil. “Just . . . thinking. About, um, stuff. What?”

“Is Annabeth . . . ?” Henry’s voice trails off. “Uh . . . never mind.”

“Look,” and Percy realizes that his own voice sounds annoyed now; he tries to dull the edge in it (considering Jason and Henry have nothing to do with his anger) but isn’t entirely successful, “let’s just . . . get back to the discussion.”

Annabeth returns after a few minutes, her hair a little messier than it was before and her face paler but reasonably calm. She slides back into the seat next to Percy and he puts his arm around her shoulder. He can feel the tautness in her neck, and he moves his hand to rub it gently, trying to massage the tension out of it. He forgets the others for a moment as she tilts her head back, closing her eyes, and her curls spill over his hand.

“Guys, actually, I think we have enough,” says Jason suddenly. “Let’s just . . . is there anything else you want to talk about?”

“It’s Act I, King Lear, right?” says Annabeth, not even opening her eyes. “Did you discuss the idea of a reversed parent-child relationship – parents not wanting to acknowledge the validity of their children?”

Percy stiffens. He kind of read that into it, but not fully. He considers stopping Annabeth, but decides to let her keep going.

“Cordelia is the only daughter who doesn’t want things from her father – she refuses to lie to him and flatter him just so he’ll give her more wealth,” she says. Her voice is calm, but Percy can hear the undertones in it. “And in return for her honesty, what does she get? Tossed aside. Punished.”

Percy presses his fingers harder at the base of her neck, trying to calm her. But despite everything, he can feel it stiffening even more. She keeps talking: “The fall of a favorite child from the eyes of a mentally-deteriorating parent. The idea that we don’t want to be told what we don’t want to hear; we only see what we want to see.”

By the time she finishes, Jason and Henry are both staring at her. Percy’s a little amazed, too – first of all, how does she know King Lear that well when she’s not even reading it, but mostly he’s just sad and understanding because he knows exactly what she’s thinking and why she’s thinking it.

“Wow,” says Jason finally, breaking the silence. “Um, thanks. I mean, yeah. It’s interesting how Cordelia tells Lear the truth, and the other girls just flatter him, and he believes them.”

“I mean, her knowing she’ll pass from her father to her husband also brings up the issue about the role of women in the society,” points out Annabeth, “but that could take the conversation in a completely different direction.”

Percy finds it a little hilarious how in two minutes his girlfriend has managed to say more than the three of them came up in their whole half-hour long discussion, but mostly he’s just sad that both of them – although especially she – can understand this play so well. Now that he understands what it’s about – leave it to Annabeth to give him a concise analysis that completely explains the act to him – he’s wondering how much he’ll be able to relate to the rest of this play.

“Do we want to write our summaries here or later?” asks Henry, and Percy might not have been averse to just staying and writing them out together except for the fact that Annabeth is still tense beside him and he really just wants to go home with her and spar and release their aggression and be free of this place that suddenly feels too small for them.

“Let’s write them at home,” he says. “I have other stuff to do this afternoon, and Paul should be done by now.” Usually he and Annabeth prefer to walk home because Paul stays later at the school than either of them wants to, but because of this after-school group meeting they’re going to catch a ride home with him.

“Works for me,” Jason nods. “See you later, Percy, Annabeth.” Annabeth, who’s already shoved her things into her bag, stands up and nods at them in goodbye. Before Percy can even push back his chair she’s scooped up his backpack and slung it over her shoulder as well.

“Chivalry goes both ways, Seaweed Brain,” she says, smiling tightly at him, but he can tell that mostly she just wants to get out of there. So he bids goodbye to Jason and Henry and trails after her as she begins to walk fast down the hall.

He can barely keep up with her; she always beat him during races at Camp Half-Blood and she’s definitely on a mission to put as much space between herself and . . . well, something, as she can. He’s practically running to keep up with her strides; her calf muscles are flexing with her power walk and it would be really distracting if not for the fact that there are much more important things to focus on.

“Annabeth,” he pants, catching up and tugging her to a stop outside Paul’s classroom, “what’s going on? I mean, I know what’s going on, but what happened back there?”

“I just . . . that owl.” Her teeth are clenched; she’s still wearing both of their backpacks but at the moment it’s probably better if he doesn’t remind her. “I just started drawing it, and then I started thinking about parents and children and I just got so _mad_ ” –

“I get it.” He does – there are moments when he feels that anger he felt against Akhlys inside him, as though it’s poisoning him more thoroughly than her venom ever could, from the inside out. He knows Annabeth feels it, too, but her logic is cooler and more able to temper it than his, so it shows less often in her. But he often wonders what’s really going on in her head. As well as he knows her, as much as he loves her, he still sometimes wonders about that. “I’m sorry.”

“Ugh, how many times are we going to talk about the same things?” she groans. She slumps against the lockers outside of Paul’s classroom and lets the backpacks slide down her arms and onto the floor. “It’s like we go over the same conversations and the same memories and the same nightmares over and over again, but it doesn’t ever get any better, and I just” –

“Want it to go away.” Percy leans against the lockers next to her, suddenly exhausted. “Want it to be better. Me too.”

Her eyes are closed, but she leans over and finds his shoulder without much difficulty and this time she’s the one massaging his neck and upper back, and it feels so good that he feels a little sigh burst from him, as though there’s been trapped air in his lungs for a while now and finally he can let it out.

“I just don’t know how to deal with it, Percy,” she admits, and he can tell that that’s painful for her – for Annabeth, not knowing something is a mortal sin.

And because he knows even less than she does, all he can do is shrug sadly and say nothing.


	9. Chapter 9

They’re still being friendly.

Three weeks into the school year, and people have not yet given up on Annabeth and Percy as lost causes. It’s a little unnerving – Annabeth would never have predicted that mortals would be so persistent when it came to friendship. At all the schools she’s ever attended, she avoided people, and they did the same to her. It was easiest, after all, not to get too many people interested in her affairs. It made for fewer lies she would have to tell.

But now, she and Percy are having more difficulty avoiding mortal friendships than ever before. Jason is continuously friendly to Percy in the morning, and he grins at Annabeth when he sees her in the hall. Even a couple of girls in her AP English class are starting to make advances toward her – saying hi to her every morning, calling her name before she can book it out of the classroom and making small talk.

She doesn’t understand why the mortals aren’t scared off – the increasingly dark shadows under both of their eyes that indicate their chronic insomnia should be something of a giveaway that they’re both pretty damaged, right? Annabeth feels so stiff around other people – and she knows Percy does, too – that they should be able to read her experiences from her mind without a word from her. And yet, the mortals keep trying to be their friends.

This is not comfortable territory. Everything inside of Annabeth is screaming, _Abort!_

But she can’t do that.

Because as much as she sometimes wants to leave this school and the world and flee to camp where – although it’s filled with reminders of the demigod world – she can be her whole self without having to glance over her shoulder all the time, without having to make sure Percy’s constantly at her side – as much as she desires that, she is also starting to realize that she wants to live a normal life. She wants to move past everything that has happened and become a whole and happy person who’s able to mix with mortals and who doesn’t have gods nosing into her affairs all the time.

And if she wants that to happen, she has to learn to live in the mortal world.

It’s awkward and uncomfortable and she doesn’t want to get into a position where she’ll have to think about and care for these people – but at the same time, she wants it to happen.

It’s a confusing dichotomy of the mind, and she’s not sure what to do with it, but it’s there.

And sure, she has Reyna and the rest of the Seven; she has Rachel and Grover and _Percy_ – of course she’ll always have Percy – but if she wants to live a normal life she’ll have to learn how to trust people, right?

Right?

Natural things should come naturally, right? This does not.

But in this third week of school, posters start appearing all over the walls – on the bulletin boards, giant ones on butcher paper on the wall of the cafeteria. Soon, the same word starts popping up in every conversation she overhears, gliding over the heads of people in the hall, blaring out over the morning announcements. _Homecoming._

“We’re not going,” she tells Percy the first day they hear about it, when they’re sitting together at lunch. She doesn’t ask, _Are we going_? Because they are not.

He nods. “I know,” he says.

There’s a moment when she knows they’re both picturing it – crowds of sweaty, sticky people; loud music and flashing lights, overstimulation for every instinct they have; dancing crowds pushing them apart, unable to find one another again – separated from Percy, lost in darkness –

She lets out a little gasp and reaches across the table for Percy’s hand; his fingers lock onto hers and his grip is tight enough to tell her he was thinking the same thing.

She shakes herself out of it, trying to ignore the way her heart is suddenly thudding in her ears and cold sweat is beading at her temples. “Nope,” she says decisively, although her fast breathing robs the word of its strength.

“Nope,” he agrees.

* * *

“Are you going?”

Jason’s voice comes from the table over. He’s kept up the talking to Percy even after their King Lear assignment was finished and turned in – and he’s persistent enough that Percy’s walls are starting to crumble.

“Going where?” he says, though, confused.

“Homecoming, duh!” Jason grins at him. “What else?”

“Oh.” Percy realizes that he was right; it is pretty obvious what he was asking. “Uh, no.”

“Why not?” Jason looks surprised. “You’ve got a girlfriend and everything. Doesn’t Annabeth want to go?”

Percy almost wants to laugh at that. On the list of Things Annabeth Definitely Doesn’t Want to Do, Homecoming is probably number one. But he should probably cut Jason some slack. He doesn’t know why Percy and Annabeth are so averse to everything social. So instead of laughing, he just says, “Not really her thing.”

“Fair enough.” Jason shrugs. “But it should be fun.”

Usually, this is where Percy would have left the conversation, having fulfilled his social duty. But today, he decides to take a risk and keep going. “Do you have a date?”

Jason looks surprised, but recovers himself admirably quickly. “Working on one.” His voice sinks. “You know Emma?”

“The cheerleader?” Percy casts his eyes across the room at where she’s sitting, giggling, with her friend Hayley.

Jason nods. “I’m asking her. Actually, I have it all planned out – want to help?”

Percy doesn’t know what’s gotten into him today – but whatever reckless spirit it is has seized his head and is jerking it up and down. “Tell me what to do.”

Somehow, despite a few years of high school, Percy has missed just how extravagant people can be when asking others to dances. Sure, he saw the occasional large sign reading, “HOMECOMING?” taped to a locker, and heard the occasional applause when someone said yes to an invite, but he hasn’t realized how grand the whole affair actually is. At least, not until he hears Jason’s plan.

* * *

“We’re doing _what_?” Annabeth asks him at lunch, staring, after he tells her what he’s volunteered them for.

He sighs, drags a hand through his hair. “Jason’s asking this girl Emma to Homecoming,” he explains again. “He wants this gauntlet of couples standing in the hall outside her sixth-period class. We don’t actually have to do anything; we just have to stand there and hold signs up. Apparently he’s going to do the rest.”

_“Di immortales,_ ” Annabeth says, looking impressed despite herself. “These mortals really go over the top for dances, don’t they?”

He shrugs, but he knows that was her agreeing to help. “Guess so,” he says. “So I’ll tell Jason we’re in?”

She nods, rolling her eyes. “As long as you promise never to do something like that for me.”

He glances around to make sure no one is watching and sneaks a kiss. “Promise,” he says. _On the Styx,_ he doesn’t say, and he can tell she’s grateful for that. Not that he’s still thinking about oaths or anything –

So the next day they’re standing outside Emma’s sixth-period class – the teacher having been asked to delay her for a few minutes so they can get into formation – with three other couples. Jason is directing operations – they stand a few feet apart; boys on one side, girls on the other. Each couple holds a piece of paper between them, which they will drop when Emma walks through the gauntlet.

Percy and Annabeth are the second set; their paper reads, “Homecoming.” And despite both of their initial doubt about this, they are both starting to think that it’s pretty sweet after all – if a lot more extravagant than suits their tastes.

The door to the classroom opens; Emma walks out, and her jaw drops.

The first couple, holding the sign with her name, beckon her forward. As she approaches, they drop the paper to the floor and she keeps walking, her hands now over her mouth. She gets closer to Percy and Annabeth; they drop their sign and as she walks between them, they hear her laughing breathlessly.

She passes the couple behind them – WITH – and the last set – ME – and makes her way to the end, where Jason is standing, holding a bouquet of carnations.

“So, Emma?” he asks. Percy can’t see Emma’s face, but Jason is smiling hopefully. “Will you go to Homecoming with me?”

“I – yeah. Of course I will.” She hugs him, and the hallway bursts into spontaneous applause.

Annabeth catches Percy’s wrist and the two of them leave, Percy tossing a grin to Jason as they slip away from the scene and start for home. And as they walk out the door, he finds himself smiling a little wistfully at the thought – at these people who are so invested in this dance, at the normal mortal lives that he and Annabeth have never had.

This is the first thing that makes him want to go to the dance after all.

* * *

Of all people, it’s Hazel who first plants the seed in Annabeth’s mind. She, Reyna, and Frank have just finished their weekly Iris-message, but for once the girls don’t have any responsibilities and Percy is doing his homework so he doesn’t need Annabeth for anything. So Frank has (wisely) fled the scene, and Annabeth, Reyna, and Hazel are sitting and having some good, old-fashioned girl talk.

(Well, good old-fashioned girl talk probably doesn’t include weapons and armor, but that’s just a technicality)

Eventually the conversation turns to school, and neither of them has ever gone to a non-mythology-related school in the 21st century, so they – especially Hazel – are peppering Annabeth with questions. They’ve talked about the classes, about Percy’s tutoring sessions, about homework –

“Are the stories about school dances true?” asks Hazel suddenly. “Like the ones you see in movies?”

“Getting your crash-course in the new millennium?” teases Annabeth. “Who’s been showing you these movies?”

Hazel’s dark skin doesn’t reveal blushes easily, but the way she ducks her head serves as enough of an indicator. Reyna raises her eyebrows at Annabeth. “Who do you think? My fellow praetor is often requesting nights off to go to the New Rome theater.”

Hazel groans, falling backwards until she lies splayed on the floor where she and Reyna are. Annabeth rocks upward to her knees to get a better look at her. “Hazel, you know we’re just teasing you. It’s sweet that you and Frank go to the movies.”

“Until he starts skipping out on paperwork” –

“Shush, Reyna.” Annabeth pretends to swat at her, stopping before she can hit the Iris-message and break the connection. “You know he wouldn’t do that. And Hazel, to answer your question, yes. People are getting ready for a dance right now, actually – Homecoming.” She describes the hubbub in the school, and Jason’s elaborate plan to ask the cheerleader to the dance.

“He actually did that?”

“His name is Jason?”

Annabeth nods, smirking. “Yes, his name is Jason, and yes, he’s put forth a ton of effort to get Percy to be his friend. It’s hilarious, really.”

“Are you and Percy going to the dance?” asks Reyna.

Annabeth leans back on the heels of her hands, pressing them into the carpet. “No,” she says. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves or, I don’t know, risk getting attacked or something. Plus, dances are . . .” She pauses, thinking about the hot-and-sticky dance floor, the odd lighting – too reminiscent of a place she wants to forget. “Not our thing,” she finishes, hoping that will suffice.

Hazel nods. “I understand,” she says. “I doubt I’d want to go either. But maybe it would be fun.” Annabeth raises her eyebrows, and Hazel shrugs. “Maybe not – but you two did want to live a normal life. It could be okay to see how the mortals behave in high school.”

The conversation shifts tack pretty quickly after that, and neither Hazel nor Reyna pushes the dance any further. But, unbeknownst to the other two, when they “hang up,” Annabeth is pondering it.

Rachel calls her then, barely five minutes after she has ended her other message. Unlike the others, though, Rachel calls on the phone (the landline, since she knows the dangers posed by Annabeth’s cell phone), and Sally hands it to Annabeth.

“Hello?” she says cautiously, unsure of who would be calling her.

“So, I heard there was a dance that you were thinking of not going to.” Rachel’s voice rings through the phone, with that all-knowing air she uses so often.

“Rachel, the Oracle is _gone._ You can no longer get away with that I-know-something-you-don’t-know act.”

“Fine.” Rachel huffs. “Make fun of the Oracle losing her agency, why don’t you? So Hazel and Reyna told me. But that doesn’t matter. The point is that you should go to this dance.”

“Why?” Annabeth challenges. “I bet you never went to a Goode dance.”

“Very true. That is because dances are silly and pointless and do not do any good for the community, and I scorned them.”

“Then you should understand” –

“Annabeth.” Rachel’s voice is gentle now. “I’m pretty sure saving the world counts as doing good for your community. It’s okay to take a break every once in a while. You and Percy deserve to be normal teenagers for once in your lives. Going to this dance would be your opportunity to show everyone that everything that has happened to you hasn’t made you weak.”

Annabeth wants to reply – but Rachel has said everything that she’s privately thinking. So she just falls silent for a few minutes.

“Think about it, okay?” says Rachel softly on the other line, and Annabeth does.

It’s Piper who decides things – not surprisingly, really. Annabeth wants a second – well, third – opinion from her, and Percy walks into the room as they’re talking.

“I think, as Aphrodite’s daughter, it is my job to tell you to go to this dance,” says Piper solemnly, staring deeply into Annabeth’s eyes through the Iris-message. As Annabeth cracks up, Percy plops onto the floor next to her, and Piper turns to him. “I hear you guys are maybe planning to go to Homecoming?”

“Wait – we are?”

He turns to Annabeth, and instead of horror in his face she thinks she can see excitement. It gives her the courage to hunch her shoulders and mutter, “I was thinking about it.”

“Really?” He slings an arm around her. “I was starting to think about it, too. Ever since that thing with Jason” –

“Wait, what about Jason?” Piper’s voice cuts in; Annabeth turns back with a laugh to the Iris-message. She realizes they haven’t told Piper about the other Jason yet.

“Ah, Piper,” she says, starting to smile, “you’re going to enjoy this . . .”


	10. Chapter 10

So they’re going to Homecoming.

Percy tells Jason the next day that they’ve changed their minds, and Jason’s grin spreads so wide Percy thinks it’s going to pop off his face. (Though the smile Emma shoots him across the room could have something to do with that) “That’s awesome, man!” he says. He holds out his hand for a high five, and Percy obliges. “You and Annabeth should come eat dinner with my group before the dance!”

“You . . . have a group?”

“Course. It’s senior year – gotta make the most of it, right? Emma and I, Henry and Makayla, and a couple of other people are getting together at my house before the dance for pictures and then going out somewhere to eat. You guys should come!”

“I’ll talk to her,” says Percy. “But . . . but it sounds like fun.”

After school that day, he gets an Iris-message that terrifies him even more than the idea of going to Homecoming at all: it’s Jason Grace on the other end of the message (Percy realizes with a shock of horror that he’s going to have to start mentally differentiating between the two Jasons), and he wants to take Percy to get a suit.

“Uh, Jason, the dance is semiformal,” he says. “I was just gonna wear, like, a button-up or something.”

Jason grins wickedly at him. “Oh, no, you don’t, Jackson,” he says. “Piper is acting like a real Aphrodite kid and has declared that she’s taking Annabeth shopping. And if they’re going shopping for a dress, you and I are going to get you a suit.”

“Sounds great,” says Percy, “except I don’t wear suits.”

Jason is not deterred. “Yes, you do.”

And that is how Percy ends up with Jason that weekend. The four of them meet outside Percy’s apartment. After the appropriate hugs and greetings are dispensed, Piper grabs Annabeth’s arm and tugs her away, leaving Jason and Percy alone.

Percy feels a sinking sensation, as though his doom is approaching – and Jason’s broad grin doesn’t help. It’s a bit terrifying, actually. Jason hooks an arm around Percy’s shoulder (one inch taller and he thinks he’s _so_ much better) and ruffles Percy’s hair with his other hand. “Come with me, and I will teach you all that you need to know about suits, Perseus Jackson. I am older, and wiser” –

“Uh, actually,” Percy squirms out from under Jason’s arm, “I’m older. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Grace.”

It’s funny how just a few months ago these words would have actual bite behind them. Now, Jason just laughs – genuine and open – and pulls back. “Come on, bro,” he says. “Let’s go shopping.”

* * *

While Percy and Jason are off shopping for Percy, Annabeth and Piper are browsing dress stores. Piper is much more interested than Annabeth – rifling through racks of dresses with a practiced hand and eye. Annabeth can’t help but wonder, “Have your siblings rubbed off on you, Pipes?”

Piper cocks her head to one side. “You know, I think they have. And just a couple of months ago I would have been horrified about that, but now I’m okay with it.”

Annabeth smiles. “Maybe it’s because you’re realizing that strength can be more than just fighting skill.”

Piper snorts. “Says she who still disarms me every time we spar.”

Annabeth laughs. “Hey, when you’re good, you’re good.”

“Well, you’re good.” Piper pulls aside a couple more dresses. “You know, something I never realized about the Aphrodite cabin is how great they can be with combining fashion and practicality. I’m learning a lot.”

“Yeah?” Annabeth braces a hand on her hip. “Impress me.”

“Well.” Piper turns to her. “Okay, you know Angela’s stilettos? Those things are deadly – I mean, literally deadly. The heels are celestial bronze, and she killed a _dracaena_ once with one by impaling it through the eye.”

Annabeth whistles. “Impressive.”

Piper grins, turning back to the dresses. “Also, I can pick the perfect dress for you for this dance. You’ll want something long enough to hide your leg sheath, but loose or with a slit so you have freedom of motion. Nothing strapless, so it won’t fall off if you need to fight or run. Hmm, what else?” She pauses. “I can do your hair with celestial bronze bobby pins – Lacy and a couple of other people have stashes that I’m sure they’ll let me dip into – so you have emergency backup weapons just in case. Flat, practical shoes. And I’m sure we can figure out more.”

“Nice.” Annabeth is happy to see Piper fitting in with her siblings – and really happy to have a friend who can help her with this. “I’m glad you know this stuff, because I’ll need practicality. I’m still questioning this whole idea, really.”

Piper turns away from the dresses unexpectedly and hugs her – Annabeth is surprised at first, but Piper has that magical ability to do just the right thing, and Annabeth finds herself relaxing. She doesn’t even know if she can admit how much fear is still attached to this dance – to her whole life. She has enough trouble with the fears and uncertainties that plague her on a daily basis, with the memories of the wars, of Tartarus, that she still can’t shake.

“Hey,” says Piper softly, not letting go of Annabeth. “It’ll be okay. _You’ll_ be okay.”

And Annabeth doesn’t know if Piper’s charmspeaking or if she just wants so badly to believe it, but either way she leans her head on Piper’s shoulder and lets herself be comforted.

* * *

Piper is as good as her word when it comes to shopping. When they meet up with the boys, at an Italian place to eat, Annabeth is holding a bag containing a dress that fits as many of Piper’s qualifications as they could find, and a tie for Percy to match.

Percy and Jason get there a few minutes later, grinning broadly and both clutching far too many shopping bags. Jason’s glasses are far too crooked on his face, and Percy’s hair is more messed up than usual. 

“You know,” Piper whispers to her, “if Jason weren’t so in love with me I’d be afraid he was going to leave me for Percy.”

Annabeth can’t help but laugh – Piper has put the sentiment perfectly into words. “I feel the same way. Hey, you two!”

Percy wraps Jason in a headlock as they approach; Jason hooks a leg around his ankle, and they are about to literally start wrestling in the middle of the sidewalk, when Piper clicks her tongue impatiently and grabs Jason’s hand, tugging him free.

Percy breaks away and turns to greet Annabeth. “Hey,” he says, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

She leans over to kiss him. “Hey yourself. Got your clothes?”

“Among other things,” Jason breaks in, shaking his shopping bags.

“Do I want to know?” asks Piper, raising an eyebrow.

Jason seems to ponder. “Probably not.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes and laces her fingers through Percy’s. “You two are ridiculous. Let’s just eat, shall we?”

* * *

It’s harder to say goodbye to Jason and Piper than they would have thought. As Piper and Percy are hugging goodbye, Jason pulls Annabeth to the side.

“Hey, Annabeth,” he mutters. “I wanted to ask you a favor, actually.”

Annabeth arches her eyebrows and thinks about what Jason could possibly want from her. The answer comes to her too quickly, and she nods. “This is about your _pontifex maximus_ thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He nibbles on his lip and shifts his feet. “I’m trying to compile a list of all the minor gods and goddesses who need temples and stuff, and Chiron is going to help me with it. But I was wondering . . . I mean, I know you and Percy are . . .”

“Tired?” Annabeth supplies. Gross understatement as it is, it’s somehow the only word that can even vaguely sum up her profound exhaustion. It covers everything – the way she and Percy still sleep only a few hours every night, the way her nerves are frayed every day from jumpiness, the way they’re both so _sick_ of being used –

“Yeah.” Jason sucks his lip almost completely into his mouth. “I just . . . you’re the best architect I know, and I . . . was wondering if you’d help design the temples.”

This is pretty much the request that Annabeth expected. This will be a big project, she knows. One that might interfere with the other ideas that have been creeping into her head – other things she could design. Things she could build that are so large and so scary that she can’t even fully entertain the thought. Not yet. But it tempts her more and more every day.

“I . . .” She hesitates, but Jason looks nervous and unsure and pleading at the same time – how does Piper resist that face? And maybe she’ll regret this, but – “Sure, Jason. I’ll help.”

His sigh of relief seems to come from his very bones. “Thanks so much,” he says, and he leans forward to embrace her.

As she hugs him back she ponders how far they’ve come since she doubted his motives and refused to trust him. Now he’s one of her best friends. “It was good to see you, Jason,” she says with feeling. “Contact me about the temples, okay? I’ll start working on them. No promises for speed, but I’ll do my best.”

“Your best is all I need,” he promises. He kisses her on the cheek, which she didn’t expect, but which warms her heart anyway.

Then he turns to Percy, and Piper throws herself into Annabeth’s arms, hugging her warmly and enthusiastically. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” she says. “I have to get you those bronze hairpins, after all.”

“Yeah – I’ll be waiting on those.” Annabeth squeezes her tight. When she lets go, she flicks one of Piper’s braids. “Have fun at camp, okay? Keep in touch.”

“Will do,” says Piper. “I will see you soon – you’ll see.” She kisses Annabeth’s cheek, too. “And Annabeth – you’re going to be okay. You both are.”


	11. Chapter 11

Despite Piper’s reassurances, the day of the dance does not begin on an auspicious note.

Percy can tell the night before as soon as they go to bed that it’s going to be a bad night. Worse than usual, that is.

They lie in bed in silence for the first hour, as it usually goes. Trying to fall asleep. They’ve given themselves the limit of an hour before they’re allowed to start talking. But Annabeth remains stiff beside him, never softening the way she does when she’s asleep. And his own mind wanders – flicking through all the old standbys: Bob, Damasen, Leo, the House of Night –

He tightens with guilt when he remembers the _arai_ and everything they said about what a horrible person he was, what a horrible friend. And he goes through the usual rationalizations – he didn’t mean to, he was trying his best – and as usual, they don’t work.

Because he should have done _more_! He should have tried harder – there’s no excuse for being a bad person, there’s no excuse for deserting people he had obligations to. He told the gods to free Calypso – he should have made sure they followed up on their promise. Then she would have been okay, Annabeth wouldn’t have been hurt – and he should have checked up on Bob; he should have realized that Hades wouldn’t be treating him well in the palace. He should have, he should have, he should have . . .

As though she can read his mind – which, who knows, she probably can – Annabeth snakes an arm around him and pulls him close. But then she stiffens, and he knows she’s remembering something herself – and minute by agonizing minute, the hour passes and they give up on sleep and just talk for a while.

“I wish . . .” she murmurs, but her voice trails off before she finishes her sentence.

“You wish what?”

“A lot of things.” She sighs. “But none of them are likely to come true, in any case.”

It’s funny, because the first war didn’t have this effect on them – the nightmares worse than usual, the chronic insomnia. But now Percy is struck by flashbacks of that war as well as the most recent one, and he doesn’t know why.

“Maybe . . .” Annabeth hesitates when he tells her, and then she plunges forward. “Maybe it’s because we understand a little better why it got started.”

She doesn’t say anything beyond that, because he knows that it still hurts her to think about him. _Luke._

It hurts Percy, too, because more than ever before he’s starting to understand the guy. He feels hints of that same darkness and capacity for cruelty in himself, and it terrifies him.

They wind tighter together in the bed, and hold on.

When they finally give up on sleep, it’s about six in the morning and they’ve accumulated maybe an hour or two between them. Percy’s not sure why some nights are worse than others, but it’s not even a scale of good to bad – only bad and worse.

Annabeth moans, rolling onto her back and throwing an arm backward. Her wrist bangs against the wall, but she doesn’t even flinch – and after the initial noise, nor does Percy. He’s much more concerned with the tears beading in her eyes.

“Hey.” He rolls over, so that he’s propped on his elbows and leaning over her. “You okay?”

“No,” she responds. “And that’s why I’m so – so” – She brushes angrily at her eyes, and he can tell that those are tears of frustration. “Just – why can’t it be better? When is it going to be better? Are we just going to be like this forever now?”

Percy slumps down next to her, jamming his face into the pillow. He almost wants to suffocate himself – except for the fact that the whole thought of suffocation brings to mind Akhlys _all over again_ , and his breath starts coming fast and he has to yank his head away before he actually inhales pillow and suffocates for real –

“I just want to sleep,” mumbles Annabeth, and he can hear a choked sob in her voice. “Why is that – so – difficult?”

And then a thought hits Percy, and he curses hard – in English and Greek. “Annabeth, today is Homecoming.”

The noise that she makes would be considered a full-blown wail if it were just a bit louder.

“We could skip.” Percy doesn’t want to admit how tempting that idea sounds to him, but it’s not like he’s capable of lying to Annabeth after all this time.

She moans again, and finally rolls over. “No, you told Jason. We have to meet his group. Also I think Piper will kill me if she doesn’t get to help me get ready. She’s had, like, training with her siblings for this.”

Percy’s not sure whether he wants to laugh or to swear again, so he does an odd mixture of both.

Annabeth tucks her head into the crook of his neck. “Besides, it’s not like going to the dance would take away from our much-needed sleep.”

When they finally get up, Annabeth claims the bathroom first, so Percy stumbles into the kitchen, slides into a chair, and slumps his head into his arms. He’s so frustrated and tired and sad, and he doesn’t have the energy to do anything but let it seethe inside him.

“Percy?” It’s his mom’s voice.

“Mmmrpgh,” he replies.

He feels a cool hand on the back of his neck, fingers probing and massaging, softening spots that Percy didn’t even realize were tense. “Bad night?” she asks.

Percy keeps his head down. “You could say that.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”

Behind him he hears the bathroom door open, and he twists his head to the side to see Annabeth emerge, curls slightly tamer but generally looking as awful as he feels. Her face is pale, her eyes bloodshot, and she also slouches down the hall and falls into a chair, mimicking his position at the table.

“Isn’t there anything you could do?” asks Percy’s mom. “Something at camp” –

“The Hypnos cabin,” says Annabeth woodenly. “They have potions. But Clovis asks a lot in exchange, and . . . well . . .”

They don’t like being trapped in sleep; that’s the problem. If they take the Hypnos cabin’s potions, they’ll be stuck in nightmares that they can’t leave.

“I understand,” says Percy’s mom. “But if this goes on for long enough . . .”

“I know,” says Percy tightly. She’s right – but it’s not like they can really do anything about it.


	12. Chapter 12

At about two o’clock, Annabeth opens the door to two daughters of Aphrodite.

She stares in shock at the smiling Piper and her younger sister, who can barely seem to keep still. “This is gonna be great!” beams Lacy, shaking the large bag she’s holding. “I can’t wait to get started!”

_Get started?_ Annabeth mouths to Piper over Lacy’s head. Piper just grins, and Lacy leads the way into the house.

“Come on, Annabeth,” says Piper quietly, lagging behind. “I can’t do hair or makeup. She can. She’s the sweetest one I could bring, anyway.”

Sighing, Annabeth cedes the point. Lacy’s enthusiasm is pretty sweet, and she looks so excited –

“Fine,” she mutters to Piper. “Thanks, I guess.”

Piper winks. “Don’t mention it.”

When they reach the bathroom, they find a surprised Percy with a towel wrapped around his waist being kicked out into the hall. Lacy wipes steam off the mirror, perches on the edge of the counter, and faces Annabeth with pursed lips.

“Dress first,” she orders. “Then hair, then makeup.”

Luckily, Annabeth showered before Percy so she doesn’t have to take care of that. She snags the dress from Percy’s room and locks Piper and Lacy out of the bathroom while she changes, letting them back in as she surveys herself in the mirror.

The dress is dark blue with lace cap sleeves and a skirt that reaches her knees, but flares out enough that she won’t have to worry about being restricted. Her knife is strapped to her thigh, so the dress covers it well enough. The only thing it doesn’t manage to do is cover her scars.

She’s contemplating this when the other girls enter the bathroom and look her up and down. Piper is the first to grin. “I guess it’s okay,” she mocks, which is what Annabeth said in the dressing room when they bought it.

Annabeth’s too out of sorts to be amused, though. She’s still grumpy from lack of sleep, and very much on edge. She rubs absently at the scar on her upper arm where the poisoned dagger sank in last summer – it’s the most obvious, as it’s long, ridged, and still tinged very faintly green. But there are lines of _empousa_ talons on the other arm, scars from Tartarus that still tingle sometimes; there is the gash from Periboia on her leg and when she looks hard at her own skin she can still see rough patches and little hard bumps that will never go away, tiny blisters that the Tartarus air left permanently on her skin.

Normally she doesn’t care – the blisters aren’t obvious, and she wears clothes that distract from them. But this dress is meant to show off her body, and she feels more raw and visible than ever before.

Percy’s lucky. His arms and legs will be covered. Hers will be out there, broadcasting her secrets to the world.

Piper puts a hand on her arm. “Annabeth,” she says quietly. “I know you don’t believe me, but you look stunning.”

She’s not sure if it’s her lack of sleep or just the fact that she feels totally, woefully unprepared for this, but suddenly she wants to cry and has to bite her lip hard to hold back welling tears. She can’t speak past the lump in her throat, but she fingers her scars, runs her hands over her skin –

“They make you look tough,” pipes up Lacy. “Which you are.” Annabeth looks over to see the younger girl giving her a surprisingly understanding smile. “And I have concealer if you want. But to be honest, I think you’re more beautiful without.”

Annabeth swallows hard. “Thanks,” she manages to say in a slightly businesslike tone. Even if Aphrodite girls are the best with emotion, she still feels awkward revealing so much of herself. “But, um . . . I think concealer would be best. Don’t want people asking too many questions, you know.”

“Right,” Lacy says shrewdly. “Well, I’ll get you made up: beautiful _and_ inconspicuous. But hair first.”

When Lacy has finished, Annabeth can barely recognize herself in the mirror. Someone she doesn’t know stands before her, someone with her eyes and basic facial structure, but someone much more beautiful than she has ever been.

The whole while she worked, Lacy was singing Annabeth’s hair’s praises, twisting the curls together and marveling at the “perfect ringlets.” “I don’t even need my curling wand!” she exclaimed at one point while Piper and Annabeth muffled smiles.

Then she turned to makeup, brushing concealer over the scars on Annabeth’s arms and the (admittedly very faint) blisters on her face. Under the magic of Lacy’s cosmetic brush, the dark circles under Annabeth’s eyes disappeared and her eyelashes lengthened, giving her a – dare she say it? – _flirty_ look.

“Wow,” Annabeth breathes. She reaches up to touch her hair, where her curls are piled on top of her head with a few tendrils hanging around her face, but Lacy smacks her hand away.

“Don’t touch!” she scolds. Stepping back, she cocks her head to the side. “Hmm. I’d say she looks stunning, huh, Piper?”

“You’ve got the magic touch, Lacy,” says Piper, her voice both amused and impressed. “Not that she wasn’t beautiful before.”

Though she’s still tired and nervous, Annabeth can’t deny that seeing this beauty in the mirror has given her a shot of confidence. “Wow,” she says again, amazed. “You’re . . . you’re incredible, Lacy. Thank you so much.”

Lacy grins, already tucking things back into her enormous makeup bag – it’s carefully compartmentalized, Annabeth notices, as organized as her own binder for school. “I live to serve. But I should leave you now; my Aphrodite-senses tell me Percy’s standing confused in his bedroom right now trying to figure out how to tie his tie.”

Whether that’s Aphrodite-senses or not remains to be seen; more likely it’s just that it’s pretty obvious to anyone who knows Percy. All the same, Annabeth chuckles as she hears the door to Percy’s room bang open and Lacy’s voice, “No, no, no!” ring down the hall.

Piper laughs quietly, too, and gives Annabeth a hug. “You’ll be fine,” she says kindly. “Tonight will be great. You’ll see.”

“I’d feel more confident if you were Rachel saying that,” murmurs Annabeth, but she squeezes Piper back.

And then the bathroom door opens a little more, Piper backs away, and Percy’s standing in the doorway.

Annabeth feels suddenly exposed under his silent gaze; his eyes sweep over her, taking in the dress and the makeup and the hair, and finally coming to rest where she likes them: directly on hers.

Looks have never been the biggest part of their relationship – most important is the bond of trust they’ve spent years building and the inherent compatibility, followed by so many more important things – but when he gazes at her like that (looking sharp in his suit jacket and tie, not to mention), she can’t help but feel a shiver of delight.

And then he steps forward, his arms flying into the air as though he doesn’t dare touch her. His hands finally come to rest on her shoulders, his lips to her ear, and he whispers, “Aphrodite’s got nothing on you.”

He kisses her there, on the edge of her cheek right beside her ear, and then abruptly draws back. “Uh, no offense, Piper.”

Piper cackles. “Shut up, Jackson. Treat your girlfriend right and I won’t have to take revenge on you.”

“Is there any other way to treat her?” Percy’s voice is almost reverent, and Annabeth smiles, wrapping her arms around him and kissing the side of his head.

“Aww,” sighs Lacy. “You two are so perfect. I think my work here is done.”

“Yeah,” chimes in Piper. “We’ll just . . . see ourselves out.”

“Cool,” says Percy, moving his lips along Annabeth’s jawline. With his head lowered, she can kiss along his temple and down the side of his face, which she proceeds to do.

“See you guys sometime,” she murmurs against Percy’s skin. “Thanks for everything.”

Piper laughs again. “I think we get the message,” she says. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

“Speaking of your hair,” warns Lacy. “I worked hard on that. Don’t mess it up unless you need to – like stabbing a monster with one of those bobby pins, for instance.”

“Come on,” chides Piper, and Annabeth’s eyes flicker up to watch Piper drag her sister out the door. Then she’s immediately occupied again.

After another minute or two, though, she lets out a regretful sigh and pushes Percy away, bracing her hands on his chest. “It’s probably about time, isn’t it?”

He moves away from her with a sigh of his own. “Probably. I don’t actually know what time it is, but . . . must be close to five. We should head out if we don’t want to be late.” That he says as though he wouldn’t really mind being late.

Annabeth pulls away, lacing her fingers through Percy’s. “Your mom said she’d give us a ride, didn’t she? We can head out whenever you’re ready.”

Ten minutes later they’re climbing out of the Prius in front of Jason’s apartment. The plan is to meet there for group pictures and then go out to dinner and the dance. Sally insisted on coming in with the other parents, so she drops Percy and Annabeth in front of the apartments and goes off to find parking, promising to be up in a few minutes while they go on ahead.

Annabeth presses the buzzer, and from the other room they can make out a cacophony of noise underlying Jason’s voice. “Percy?”

“Yeah, it’s us.”

“Come on up.” There’s a buzz, and the door unlocks.

They’ve never been to Jason’s apartment before, so when they enter they need to just stare around and take it all in. The place is much nicer than Percy’s apartment – the furniture is newer and less shabby and the wall is covered in framed pictures of what must be Jason’s family.

“Hey!” Jason himself bounds toward them now. “Come on in! Everyone else is here; we were just waiting on you two.”

“Sorry,” murmurs Annabeth. “We were just getting ready.”

“No problem.” Jason takes them both in. “You guys look great. Come on – there are snacks in the kitchen; that’s where everyone else is hanging out.”

They follow him through the living room and back into the kitchen, where five more people are lounging against counters and eating crackers smeared with cheese and little ham roll-ups. At the sight of so many people, Annabeth’s hand tightens in Percy’s and she can feel his pulse jump a little. She has to fight to keep her breathing normal herself; it’s amazing how much she just doesn’t trust people anymore.

“Hey, everyone, they’re here!” announces Jason. “Do we all know each other?”

They know Emma, of course, and Henry – Annabeth has seen his date around the halls but doesn’t have a name for the face. The other couple she doesn’t know.

Jason goes around the room. “So this is Henry – you know him – and Makayla, his date; Emma is with me; and this is Hayley, Emma’s friend – Percy, you know her – and her boyfriend Glen. He goes to another school. Guys, this is Percy and Annabeth.”

There’s a chorus of “hi”s and greetings. Jason grins back at them. “We’ll do pictures in a few minutes – for now, help yourself to anything.” He gestures at the table of snacks.

Percy pounces on the food; Annabeth keeps hold of his hand, finding a bowl of olives on the counter and selecting one for herself. Percy turns to look at her and snorts. “Typical Athena kid.”

She elbows him. “Shut up.”

After a few minutes of snacks and small talk, Jason disappears again at the sound of the buzzer and returns leading Sally in behind him. She’s grinning broadly, a small camera hanging around her neck. “Hi,” she gushes. “I’m Percy’s mom – I’m glad to meet you, Jason; I’ve heard so much about you. Oh, and who are all of you?”

Percy sighs, but when Annabeth looks over she sees that he’s smiling fondly. “My mom,” he mutters under his breath.

“She’s great,” says Annabeth immediately. Part of her is still not used to Sally’s warmth, to her unhesitating kindness. She’s a mother figure the like of which Annabeth has never known, and sometimes she can’t help but envy Percy for her.

Percy seems to know what she’s thinking, though; he squeezes her hand and they go to join the group, where everyone is beginning to congregate in the living room for pictures. Jason’s parents are there, of course, introducing themselves to everyone, and there seems to be at least one parent for every couple. They all hold cameras and ooh and ah over the outfits and the couples.

“So,” says Jason’s mom, wielding her camera like a pointer, “I thought we’d start with a couple of group shots. Maybe . . . guys in the back, and girls kneel in front of them? Yes, like that.”

After several group shots, they move on to individual pictures of the couples. Jason and Emma go first; he wraps his arm around her shoulders and she puts a hand on his chest and kicks a leg up, both smiling broadly. Henry and Makayla follow them, standing next to one another in a classic pose with their arms linked.

Hayley and Glen are next, and her dress is long enough that he can sweep her up bridal-style. She shrieks with laughter as he holds her, wrapping her arms around his neck and tossing her head back while everyone claps.

Then it’s Percy and Annabeth’s turn. They stand in the middle of the room, unsure of how to pose.

“You could do what Hayley and Glen did,” suggests Jason’s mom. “Percy, if you pick Annabeth up” –

“No!” Annabeth blurts out. If her dress falls aside, her knife will be exposed – and she’s not sure what the mortals will see, but it’s not something she wants to find out. When they look at her curiously, though, she searches for a save. “Let’s try it a different way, instead,” she says quickly. She turns her back to Percy and bends down a little, holding her hands behind her in a clear invitation for a piggyback. “Climb aboard, Seaweed Brain.”

This turns out to be a horrible mistake.

As soon as Percy is on her back, the phrase _dead weight_ pops into her mind. Suddenly she’s not here anymore; she’s reliving one of the nightmares she has most often. It’s a nightmare in which Bob doesn’t come – in which he’s so devastated at their betrayal that he doesn’t help them fight the _arai_ – and Percy is dying of gorgon’s blood poison and Annabeth can’t see but she knows he’s hurt and he’s about to abandon her for real; he’s about to slip away forever and he’s dead weight on her shoulders and she has to carry him to find help, but there’s no help to be found –

And then she’s back in the present, gasping on her knees on Jason’s living room rug, trying to pull enough breath into her body to sustain her racing heart. Her ears are ringing; she can hear the vague, tinny sounds of Sally’s voice, “Stay back; give her some space!”

And then Percy’s face is in front of hers, blurry through her tears but filling her vision. “Annabeth!” he says. “Annabeth, calm down, I’m here!”

Her breath is still tearing at her throat, jagged gasps of icy air. “Percy?” she says, not trusting her eyes, not trusting her senses.

“I’m here,” he repeats, and now she can feel his hands on her shoulders, strong and warm. “I’m here, I’m alive, we’re both okay.”

Her breathing starts to slow down. “You’re here,” she whispers. “You’re here, you’re alive, we’re okay.” She can hear her teeth chattering; she’s shaking madly. “We’re okay,” she says again, trying to make herself believe it.

Percy slides his arms around her, and her hard pulse fades slowly back to normal. She holds him to her and breathes, and slowly the room comes back into focus. She can see the pattern on the rug; she can see the couch – and as she looks up, she can see the group of people in the corner of the room, all staring at her with frightened eyes.

“. . . think we should call someone?” She hears a voice. “911 or something?” It’s Jason’s mother, hurrying back into the room with the phone.

“Please don’t call 911.” Annabeth recovers her voice, though it’s raspy and trembling. “It’s not – I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Percy keeps his arms around her, warm and solid. Slowly, she stops shaking. “Thanks,” she whispers into his ear, so no one else can hear her.

“Of course.” He makes no move to detach himself from her. “You know we’re in this together, Annabeth.”

* * *

Percy can tell that Annabeth’s embarrassed, but frankly to him that pales in comparison to making sure she’s all right.

He understands what happened, of course – she doesn’t tell him what set her off, not in front of the others, but these episodes happen often enough that he knows it must have been something. They’ve been lucky up to now that they haven’t happened in front of people, or at school (though either of those would have been preferable to on the battlefield).

He had just clambered up onto her back, laughing with the others, when it happened. His only warning was a slight tremor in her body and then her legs gave out. He barely had time to jump free before she was crashing to the ground, shaking and gasping, all her muscles locked tense.

Everyone else in the room cried out; Percy shot his mom a helpless glance and she hurried to calm them while he focused on Annabeth.

Now, after a moment of whispering to her and holding onto her, she’s back to herself. He can almost watch her walls going back up, can see her eyes flickering around to where everyone else is standing and watching, and he sees her neck tauten.

“Oh, Styx,” she says softly. “Now I need an explanation, don’t I?”

He shakes his head and leans forward to whisper into her ear. “We don’t have to stay,” he murmurs. “We can just say you’re not feeling well and go back right now.”

But of course Annabeth refuses to give in, although she looks like she’ll crumble at any time now. “No,” she insists. “We should stay. Just . . . give me another minute.”

He can hear her breathing slowing down; he presses the side of his head into hers and moves his hands to her shoulders, gently massaging her upper arms. Finally, he feels pressure on his shoulders; she’s pushing herself to her feet and he rises with her, keeping hold of her arms.

“Sorry about that,” she breathes, straightening fully and looking at the rest of the group.

“Um . . .” They all seem to be struck dumb, but Jason takes the lead, as usual. “No, don’t apologize. Just – are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m fine. It was just . . .” She hesitates for a long time, swallows, and then speaks again. “Just a panic attack. I get them sometimes. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asks Jason’s mother. She makes no move to come forward; staying at the back of the room as though she’s afraid to approach. “Shouldn’t we at least call your parents or something?”

“No!” says Annabeth, and Percy winces. Way to make a bad situation worse – he knows Annabeth still doesn’t really trust her family, that they’ve always been further down on her list than Chiron or any of Camp Half-Blood. Not to mention that they’re in California, and this whole situation is just way too difficult to explain.

“It really is fine,” he adds, and he doesn’t care what they all think of him or Annabeth; most important is just that they move on and don’t attract any more attention. “So . . . where were we?”

They end up taking their “couple” picture back to back in the middle of the living room, arms folded over their chests. Percy tries to smile at the camera, but (as most of his smiles seem to do lately) he’s pretty sure it falls flat on his face. And when he twists over to look at Annabeth, her smile is more like a pained grimace.

It must be the sleepless night, he decides. It’s brought her closer to the edge – and probably him, too. He just hasn’t had any chance to blow up or freak out. But hey, there are still a few hours left in the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAAAAAA so this is where I fizzled.
> 
> Rereading this story has made me feel so many feelings - both wistfulness for when I was writing it, some cringing at my melodrama and mythology-mortal mixing, and a pretty solid surety that I'll never pick it up again. But again, it was just going to go on like this - this kind of thing happening, trying to live a normal life and do high school things and overcome personal traumas (and codependency). I hope that if you've given this a chance, you've enjoyed it. Thank you for reading!


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